Six Questions with Matt Asay of 10gen
Gazzang is hitting the road again. This time, we're in Atlanta. Home to the 1996 Summer Olympics, The Varsity and this week, MongoDB Atlanta. The annual conference is hosted by 10gen, the company behind MongoDB and a key partner for Gazzang. 10gen is a global leader in big data with an impressive customer list that includes Disney, Intuit, foursquare and CERN.
In advance of MongoDB Atlanta, I spoke with Matt Asay, 10gen's vice president of Corporate Strategy about use cases for MongoDB and why the Gazzang relationship is important for 10gen customers:
Gazzang: What are you and 10gen most excited about this year?
Matt Asay: Over the past few years, NoSQL went from an industry curiosity to a driving force for two of the industry's most important trends: cloud and Big Data. Along the way, MongoDB has established itself as the industry's most popular NoSQL database, with broad adoption by a range of customers. Going into 2013, we're seeing early experiments with MongoDB turn into enterprise-wide deployments for some seriously mission-critical applications. It's awesome to see.
But it's also to see how open source becoming such an integral part of how the enterprise builds and uses software. I'm particularly excited to see open source at the forefront of innovation now, and in 2013 I think we're going to see projects like MongoDB, Hadoop, Android, and the various open-source cloud projects drive huge value for consumers and enterprises alike. It's an exciting time to be involved with open source.
Gazzang: What are some of the unique big data challenges that 10gen helps customers solve?
Matt: While MongoDB is often used to manage large volumes of data, most enterprises actually think of "Big Data" in terms of data velocity and variety, as a recent NewVantage survey highlights. Looking at the results, a mere 28% of enterprises today see volume of data as a primary driver for their Big Data projects, falling to 25% in three years. Instead, a whopping 64% are motivated by the need to analyze streaming data, analyze new data types, or analyze data from diverse sources. That number rises to 68% in three years.
With MongoDB, enterprises:
- Build new applications that were not possible before, like a major US city that cuts crime with MongoDB using real-time analysis.
- Adapt and develop competitive advantages, like a global telco that built an online streaming video service on MongoDB to compete with Netflix and Amazon.
- Make customers happy, like a top 5 insurance company that improves customer service by generating a 360-degree view of over 100 million customers using MongoDB.
- Reduce costs, like a Tier 1 bank that saves tens of millions of dollars and meets new compliance standards by replacing legacy technology with MongoDB.
Some of these involve huge quantities of data, but Big Data's value isnt' necessarily tied to volume. It's more about intelligently using one's data to engage customers or others in ways previously difficult or impossible.
Gazzang: Why do you think the health care industry has been quick to adopt MongoDB?
Matt: Few industries generate as much data as the healthcare, making the need to cost-effectively scale so important, something easily managed with MongoDB. We have also seen healthcare organizations keen to blend structured and unstructured data to improve care, and NoSQL databases like MongoDB are an excellent way to effectively embrace a wide array of data sources. I also think MongoDB's document data store is a great fit for how healthcare organizations want to structure their data.
Gazzang: Why is data security important to your customers?
Matt: Many of our customers are in highly regulated industries like Financial Services and Healthcare. Security for these industries is not only a nice-to-have, it's a firm requirement. As important as it is to be able to scale one's databases, and to accept an array of data sources, it's critical for firms in such industries to ensure customer or other sensitive data is secure. And while we build strong security features into MongoDB itself, we're also very happy to work with security solutions like Gazzang to offer an even higher level of security.
Gazzang: Why is the Gazzang relationship important for 10gen?
Matt: As I mentioned, we take our customers' data security very seriously, and have built in advanced security functionality like Kerberos Authentication help security-conscious customers rest easy. But Gazzang helps us to add an even richer layer of security to MongoDB, something especially important to customers in regulated industries.
Gazzang: What can attendees expect to see and learn at MongoDB ATL?
Matt: MongoDB ATL, like all MongoDB events, is very focused on enabling developers and IT operations to get productive with MongoDB. There are no vendor infomercials, from 10gen or any of our partners. We keep the agenda information-rich as our main concern is making sure more and more companies build exceptional applications with MongoDB.
Webinar Wednesday with 10gen and Opscode
We are excited to host a webinar this Wednesday with our friends from 10gen and Opscode. Sandeep Parikh from 10gen and Matt Ray from Opscode will be joining Eddie Garcia, our VP of Engineering, live from our downtown Austin office for the webinar and Q&A. This will be a great opportunity to hear about our solutions and ask questions to any of these three companies. We hope you can join us!
Automating a Secure MongoDB Deployment with Opscode Chef and Gazzang zNcrypt
Pop Quiz: What's the quickest way to spin up a secure version of MongoDB? In this webinar, we'll explore the real-life use case of a non-profit education collaborative that wanted to secure sensitive student and teacher data on MongoDB using Gazzang zNcrypt. This kind of information requires a high level of security and confidentiality, but how do you protect this data in a distributed database with hundreds of nodes? We will demonstrate how Chef can help you architect security with Gazzang zNcrypt into your MongoDB environment at the deployment stage.
Date: Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Time: 11am CT
Presenters:
Matt Ray, Senior Technical Evangelist at Opscode
Sandeep Parikh, Product Management at 10gen
Eddie Garcia, Vice President of Development at Gazzang
10gen and Gazzang Partner to Deliver Enterprise-Class Data Security for MongoDB
Big Data Collection and Security
Rarely a day goes by that I don’t speak with a customer, prospect, industry analyst or reporter about big data. The companies I talk to are typically at the early stages, or “collection” phase. They are implementing the infrastructure and starting to gather streaming information from all kind of sources. In fact, they’re collecting data at a rapid pace, while still unsure how or even what information will be used. Most of these organizations have a vision of what insights will be derived from big data, but at the same time, they also expect their hypothesis to change as the project moves forward.
As strange as it may sound, I think this is actually a good thing. It’s great for the market adoption of big data technologies and especially for the up-and-coming companies like 10Gen, Datastax, Cloudera and the like. I think this will be the norm for a while, where big data projects are started with a rough idea of the downstream insights and benefits but not as well defined as may have been in the database projects days of RDBMS.
My advice is to do what I am seeing others do – start collecting. Start streaming available data into your systems. Yes, have a working hypothesis, but don’t wait until it is all baked. I think you, as others, can adapt, as the retained data grows.
And, if you too are in this “collection” phase, please think about securing and protecting the data you are gathering and storing. Make sure that there are safeguards in place so the data can’t leak out.
A best practice is to simply encrypt the data and store the key securely, but even if you don’t, have a discussion with your team on the sensitivity of the data you are collecting. Discuss the potential of negative impact if it were to get outside of the organization or even outside of the team that has access to it.
Over time, I believe this big data market will mature from the current collection phase to more structure, analysis, insights and active decision-making. At that time, I can see huge amounts of “not needed” data being purged, siphoned off or simply ignored. But, we’re not there yet. So, start an experiment or two with big data architectures and start collecting. Your competitors have probably already started.
10gen and Gazzang Partner to Deliver Enterprise-Class Data Security for MongoDB
June 27, 2012 - Business Wire Press Release
Gazzang and 10gen, the company behind MongoDB, today announced a partnership that will help customers meet data security compliance regulations and guard against unauthorized access or attack. Gazzang also announced that its zNcrypt™ solution for encrypting and securing data recently achieved formal 10gen certification.
Gazzang zNcrypt works as a last line of defense for protecting data within MongoDB, transparently encrypting and securing information “on the fly.” Whether in the cloud or on premises, zNcrypt ensures there is minimal performance lag in the encryption or decryption process. The solution also includes robust key management and process-based access controls that meet compliance regulations and allow users to store their cryptographic keys separate from the encrypted data.
“10gen provides customers the ability to collect and store massive amounts of data and quickly call it into action when requested,” said Larry Warnock, CEO of Gazzang. “Because of the elastic nature of MongoDB, customers often store a variety of data for future use. This includes a mix of innocuous machine data as well as sensitive information that, if it were to be exposed publicly, could damage an organization’s reputation and violate compliance regulations for data security. We are pleased to offer enterprise data protection for 10gen customers worldwide.”
MongoDB is the leading NoSQL database helping more than one hundred thousand users quickly and easily code, scale, and operate applications. MongoDB bridges the gap between RDBMS and key-value stores -- instead of storing data in tables and rows, MongoDB stores data in documents with dynamic schemas. Global companies relying on MongoDB for storage of their application data include 02, Craigslist, Disney, eBay, Forbes, foursquare, Intuit, Shutterfly, Telefonica, and UK Government Digital Services.
“We are excited to work with Gazzang to bring enhanced data security to MongoDB,” said 10gen’s CEO Dwight Merriman. “Together, we are addressing customer demand for robust data protection that helps meet compliance guidelines including HIPAA, PCI-DSS and EU directives, and is designed to keep big data applications safe from unauthorized access or malicious attack.”
10gen and Gazzang will host a webinar on Tuesday, July 10, 2012 at 11:00 a.m. EDT, to discuss the partnership. Click here to register for the webinar, and learn how Gazzang can help protect sensitive data in MongoDB.
Additional Resources
Encrypting Data in MongoDB Video
Securing Big Data in MongoDB Blog
About 10gen
10gen is the company behind MongoDB, the leading NOSQL database. 10gen leads development, builds community, and provides commercial services. MongoDB is an open source document-oriented database helping tens of thousands of companies quickly and easily deliver, scale, and operate applications. Founded by DoubleClick’s Dwight Merriman and Eliot Horowitz and led by seasoned technologists, 10gen is funded by Flybridge Capital Partners, NEA, Sequoia Capital and Union Square Ventures. 10gen global customers include 02, Craigslist, Disney, eBay, Forbes, foursquare, Intuit, Shutterfly, Telefonica, UK Government Digital Services, and over 500 others. 10gen has dual headquarters in New York and Palo Alto with offices in Dublin, London, and Sydney. For more information, visit www.10gen.com or www.mongodb.org. Follow us on Twitter at @MongoDB and @10gen.
About Gazzang
Gazzang provides data security solutions and operational diagnostics that help enterprises protect sensitive information and maintain performance in cloud environments. Gazzang is backed by Austin Ventures and Silver Creek Ventures. For more information, visit www.gazzang.com.
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Media Contact
Gazzang
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(512) 535-4422
10gen
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Securing Data in MongoDB with Gazzang and 10Gen
If data security is important to you, don't miss this webinar. 10gen is working with Gazzang to ensure your sensitive data is encrypted as it's written to MongoDB and your cryptographic keys remain safe and in full compliance with HIPAA, PCI-DSS, FISMA and other data security regulations. In this webinar, we'll share some real-life use cases of customers securing data in MongoDB, and we'll show you how to quickly install enterprise-class data protection in your environment.
Presenters:
Jared Rosoff, Director of Product Marketing and Technical Alliances at 10gen
Robert Linden, Senior Solutions Architect at Gazzang
David Tishgart, Director of Product Marketing at Gazzang