Slow application performance is frustrating, with poor interaction with the database being a primary contributor. Therefore, slower response times trigger lower worker productivity or fewere eyeballs on a website as users get impatient, diminishing overall company revenue.

Through a data access layer in the form of a proxy, Heimdall Data Inc. has partnered with Amazon Web Services Inc. to take this pain point away by enhancing the interaction and visibility of an application and current database, which boosts database security and scale in a timely manner, according to Roland Lee (pictured, left), co-founder and chief executive officer of Heimdall Data.

“In typical events like Black Friday, where there’s a surge in traffic that can overwhelm the database, the Heimdall data access layer Database Proxy provides an auto scaling distributed architecture such that it can absorb those surges in traffic and help scale the database while keeping the data fresh and up to date,” Lee said. “So, basically, traffic based on season, time of day, we can adjust automatically.”

Lee and Hawn Nguyen-Loughren (pictured, right), head of enterprise solutions architecture at Amazon Web Services Inc., spoke with theCUBE industry analyst John Walls at the AWS re:Invent 2022 Global Startup Program, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed the Heimdall Data and AWS collaboration and why slow application performance should be a thing of the past. (* Disclosure below.)

Getting the most out of managed database service

The partnership between Heimdall Data and AWS plays an instrumental role in improving the experience of managing a database without any application changes, according to Lee, who said that Heimdall Proxy offers much-needed intelligence.

“The AWS partnership has been absolutely wonderful,” he noted. “What the Heimdall Data does is it complements Amazon RDS, Amazon Redshift very well in the sense that we’re not replacing the database. What we’re doing is we are allowing the customer to get the most out of the managed database service, whether it is Redshift, Aurora Serverless, or RDS, all without code changes.”

Databases ought to have proxies for enhanced performance and productivity, according to Lee, who said that the Heimdall Proxy is efficient because it can be readily used.

“From large companies that do build some type of data access layer or proxy and or sometimes utilize some ORM, some object-relational mapper to do it … what we’re trying to do is offer this, put this out to the market commercially speaking,” Lee stated. “For Heimdall Data, it’s all about improving database performance and scale and those workloads change. We have OLTP we have OLAP with artificial intelligence/ML.”

The collaboration between Heimdall Data and AWS can be deemed as a better-together story, according to Nguyen-Loughren, who said that the Heimdall Proxy is a perfect fit for spurring innovation.

“So Heimdall as an independent service vendor, most customers can leverage that through a marketplace where it basically integrates very nicely with AWS. So it gives them that lift,” she stated. “And it goes back to the undifferentiated heavy lifting on the Heimdall Proxy side. I’ve seen these cases where customers have some legacy system that they may not have time to modernize the application, so they use this as a lift to keep going as they try to modernize.”

Why build when you can buy?

Heimdall Proxy offers a seamless interaction between the application and database. Therefore, it takes away the hassle of building an interface from scratch, according to Lee.

“You need some type of interface between the application and the database, and we provide that … sort of, why build when you can buy,” he said. “Large companies like Amazon.com, Google, they have huge teams that can build data access layers and proxies. And what we’re trying to do here is commercialize this, because those are built in house and it’s not readily available for customers to use.”

The tsunami of data is illustrating that data has become king, Nguyen-Loughren pointed out. As a result, the cloud has come in handy in application modernization.

“With the explosion of data, we see customers trying to modernize their application, as well, through microservices,” she explained. “So, with the scalability and agility of the cloud, we’re able to adapt to the rapid changes and ingestions of the data. So, that’s why we have things like Aurora Serverless — to have that auto scale. So they can do mySQL performance.”

Since product innovation is at the heart of enterprises, Nguyen-Loughren believes the AWS-Heimdall partnership plays an instrumental role in providing undifferentiated heavy lifting. As a result, optimal efficiency becomes a reality.

“I would say that a lot of customers are wanting to focus more on product innovation, experimentation,” she pointed out. “So with AWS, we provide undifferentiated heavy lifting so that they can focus on product innovation. Talking about Heimdall … from the database side we do provide Amazon RDS, which is a relational database, and also Aurora to give them that lift. So they don’t have to worry about patching servers and setting up provisioning servers as well.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the AWS re:Invent 2022 Global Startup Program:

(* Disclosure: Heimdall Data Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Heimdall Data nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE