The Forrester Wave™ - Big Data NoSQL, Q1 2019
The Forrester Wave™ - Big Data NoSQL, Q1 2019
by Noel Yuhanna
March 14, 2019
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forrester.com
For Enterprise Architecture Professionals
by Noel Yuhanna
with Gene Leganza and Robert Perdoni
7 Vendor Profiles
Leaders
Share reports with colleagues.
Strong Performers
Enhance your membership with
Contenders Research Share.
11 Evaluation Overview
13 Supplemental Material
A nonrelational database management system that provides storage, processing, and accessing
of any type of data and which supports a horizontal, scale-out architecture based on a
schemaless and flexible data model.
NoSQL covers a range of nonrelational databases, such as key-value, document, and graph
databases, that are optimized for a new generation of business apps, including social media, customer
360, advanced insights, real-time, and operational apps. NoSQL vendors are delivering innovative
features, such as AI and machine learning automation, integration with Apache Spark and streaming
technology, support for SQL and simplified APIs, and extensive administrative tools. Enterprises
seeking NoSQL platforms should look for vendors that:
›› Press the advantages of open source. Digital transformation often runs on open source
software.2 Today, open source NoSQL solutions are stable and ready for primetime. Enterprises like
NoSQL’s rapidly evolving ecosystem, low cost, minimized vendor lock-in, and easier customization
for complex deployments. While many NoSQL vendors offer open source solutions, look for
vendors that lead active NoSQL communities, contribute software to enhance the open source
platform, and engage with customers to drive innovation. Pricing, packaging, and support services
also differentiate the vendors.
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The Forrester Wave™: Big Data NoSQL, Q1 2019
The 15 Providers That Matter Most And How They Stack Up
›› Integrate with large ecosystems for tools and technologies. NoSQL databases are the
foundation on which to build great, modern business applications and support advanced insights.
However, NoSQL needs a strong ecosystem of tools and technologies offered by partners that can
help accelerate deployments. These include tools to support data integration, data quality, security,
governance, distributed management, and data pipelining. When acquiring a NoSQL platform, EA
pros should look at the breadth and depth of partnerships the vendor supports to take advantage
of their tools and services.
Evaluation Summary
The Forrester Wave evaluation highlights Leaders, Strong Performers, Contenders, and Challengers.
It’s an assessment of the top vendors in the market and does not represent the entire vendor
landscape. You’ll find more information about this market in our overview report on NoSQL providers.3
We intend this evaluation to be a starting point only and encourage clients to view product evaluations
and adapt criteria weightings using the Excel-based vendor comparison tool (see Figure 1 and see
Figure 2). Click the link at the beginning of this report on Forrester.com to download the tool.
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The Forrester Wave™: Big Data NoSQL, Q1 2019
The 15 Providers That Matter Most And How They Stack Up
Strong
Challengers Contenders Performers Leaders
Stronger MongoDB
current
offering Amazon Web Services
Couchbase
Redis Labs
MarkLogic
Microsoft
Aerospike
Google
Oracle
DataStax
Neo4j
IBM
SAP
ArangoDB
RavenDB
Weaker
current
offering
Market presence*
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The Forrester Wave™: Big Data NoSQL, Q1 2019
The 15 Providers That Matter Most And How They Stack Up
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Current offering 50% 3.72 3.92 1.98 4.34 3.30 3.72 2.84 3.96
Development 40% 3.30 4.10 3.00 3.50 3.00 3.30 2.30 4.50
Deployment 60% 4.00 3.80 1.30 4.90 3.50 4.00 3.20 3.60
Strategy 50% 2.90 3.90 2.00 3.90 3.70 3.90 3.10 3.10
Ability to execute 35% 3.00 5.00 3.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 3.00 3.00
Road map 45% 3.00 3.00 1.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00
Professional services 5% 1.00 5.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 5.00 3.00 3.00
Open source 10% 3.00 3.00 3.00 5.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00
Technical support 5% 3.00 5.00 3.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00
Market presence 0% 1.70 5.00 1.50 3.00 3.60 3.90 3.90 3.70
Product revenue 30% 1.00 5.00 1.00 1.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00
Install base 30% 1.00 5.00 1.00 3.00 3.00 5.00 5.00 5.00
Market awareness 25% 3.00 5.00 3.00 5.00 5.00 3.00 3.00 3.00
Partnerships 10% 1.00 5.00 1.00 3.00 3.00 5.00 5.00 3.00
Reach 5% 5.00 5.00 1.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00
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The Forrester Wave™: Big Data NoSQL, Q1 2019
The 15 Providers That Matter Most And How They Stack Up
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Current offering 50% 4.00 4.80 3.00 3.46 1.68 4.24 2.68
Development 40% 4.00 4.50 3.00 3.40 2.40 3.70 3.40
Deployment 60% 4.00 5.00 3.00 3.50 1.20 4.60 2.20
Vendor Offerings
Forrester included 15 vendors in this assessment: Aerospike, Amazon Web Services, Arango DB,
Couchbase, DataStax, Google, IBM, MarkLogic, Microsoft, MongoDB, Neo4j, Oracle, RavenDB, Redis
Labs, and SAP (see Figure 3).
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For Enterprise Architecture Professionals March 14, 2019
The Forrester Wave™: Big Data NoSQL, Q1 2019
The 15 Providers That Matter Most And How They Stack Up
ArangoDB ArangoDB
Couchbase Couchbase
DataStax DataStax
IBM Cloudant
MarkLogic MarkLogic
MongoDB MongoDB
SAP OrientDB
Vendor Profiles
Our analysis uncovered the following strengths and weaknesses of individual vendors.
Leaders
›› MongoDB remains the most popular NoSQL database. MongoDB is used by more than 8,000
companies, including many Fortune 100 companies. It is popular among app developers largely
because of its ease of use, simplified model, on-demand and elastic scale, multicloud support,
and comprehensive tooling. With the release of 4.0, MongoDB offers multidocument ACID
transactions. It supports autosharding, built-in replication, search, and mixed-workload capabilities.
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Top use cases include 360-degree analytics, real-time analytics, streaming analytics, fraud and
risk management, and other multiple workloads. Customer references like MongoDB’s innovative
features, faster time-to-value platform, and technical support.
›› Microsoft starts to get strong traction with Azure Cosmos DB. Azure Cosmos DB is Microsoft’s
globally distributed, multimodel database that enables users to elastically scale compute and
storage across Azure geographic regions. As a foundational Azure service, it is available in all Azure
regions. Its simplified database with relaxed consistency levels and low-latency access makes
it easier to develop globally distributed apps. Cosmos DB automatically indexes all data without
requiring schema or secondary indices, supports rich SQL and JavaScript queries, and offers
multidocument ACID transactions. Customer references like its resilience, low maintenance, cost
effectiveness, high scalability, multimodel support, and faster time-to-value. They use Cosmos DB
for operational apps, real-time analytics, streaming analytics, and internet-of-things (IoT) analytics.
›› Amazon Web Services offers several NoSQL databases to support various use cases. AWS
DynamoDB is a fully managed NoSQL database-as-a-service (DBaaS) that is deployed across
various types of workloads, including operational, transactional, and analytical. It automatically
shards the data across a compute farm to support large-scale, high-performance database
deployments. DynamoDB is tightly integrated with AWS EMR and AWS S3, offering the ability to
store and run big data initiatives. DynamoDB natively supports both key-value and document models
and geospatial data sets. Besides DynamoDB, AWS also offers other NoSQL databases such as
Neptune, a graph database, and a time-series database. Enterprises use DynamoDB to support
social media apps, gaming, real-time and operational workloads, IoT apps, and other eCommerce
apps. Customer references like DynamoDB’s support, performance, scale, and high availability.
›› Google offers multiple NoSQL database solutions. Google offers two NoSQL platforms: Cloud
Firestore and Cloud Bigtable. Google Cloud Firestore is a serverless, schema-agnostic database
that supports automatic sharding, high availability, ACID transactions, strong consistency, SQL-like
queries, indexes, and durability for various types of workloads, but it’s targeted at mobile, web, and
IoT apps. Cloud Bigtable is scalable, wide-column database service — the same database that
powers many Google services, such as Search, Analytics, Maps, and Gmail. Cloud Bigtable scales
to handle massive workloads at consistent low latency and high throughput for both operational
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The Forrester Wave™: Big Data NoSQL, Q1 2019
The 15 Providers That Matter Most And How They Stack Up
and analytical applications, including IoT, user analytics, advertising technology (adtech), and
financial data analysis. Customer references like Google’s performance, developer-level flexibility,
automated scalability, and ease of use.
›› Redis Labs delivers a high-performing NoSQL database. Redis is a multimodel, open source,
in-memory database platform whose key development is currently sponsored by Redis Labs.
Redis supports both relaxed and strong consistency, a flexible schemaless model, high availability,
and ease of deployment. An enterprise version encapsulates the open source software and
provides additional capabilities for geodistributed active-active deployments (multicloud, hybrid,
on-premises) with high availability and linear scaling, while supporting the open source API.
Companies use Redis for customer 360, machine learning, IoT, search, and real-time analytics as
well as for eCommerce, social metering solutions, and other use cases. Customer references like
its innovation for machine learning apps, performance, scale, customer support, and support for
diverse NoSQL use cases.
Strong Performers
›› MarkLogic offers a mature NoSQL database for various use cases. MarkLogic is the only
NoSQL document database vendor that has offered a NoSQL product for more than a decade.
It provides enterprise-class capabilities to store, process, and access all kinds of data sets for
a variety of use cases. MarkLogic runs on on-premises, hybrid-cloud, and multicloud platforms,
including AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. Customers most commonly deploy MarkLogic
for mixed workloads — including transactional, analytical, and operational. Some use it for
customer 360 analytics, healthcare analytics, real-time analytics, fraud detection, information
discovery, content delivery, and digital supply chain management. Customer references like its
ability to eliminate data silos, faster time-to-value, security, search, and simplicity.
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The 15 Providers That Matter Most And How They Stack Up
›› Oracle’s NoSQL is a viable option for Oracle customers. Oracle NoSQL database appeals to
companies looking for ACID transactions; geodistributed data; granular security controls; and
integration with Oracle Database, Oracle Wallet, Spark, and Hadoop. Oracle NoSQL has its roots
as a key-value database, but it also supports wide-column tables, schemaless JSON, and property
graph data models, delivering excellent performance, scale, security, and high availability. Many
Oracle customers use Oracle NoSQL to balance the need for scale-out workloads of simpler
key-value data with the rich set of relational data management capabilities needed in their core
business systems — or when supporting new applications that have frequently changing key-value
data, such as profiles for fraud detection, customer 360, and IoT apps.
›› Neo4j is a popular NoSQL graph database that supports many use cases. Neo4j provides
an open source property graph database and has an enterprise edition that includes clustering,
multiple geographies, and security as well as extensions that support graph analytics and
algorithms, visual graph discovery and exploration, and big data integration. Thousands of
community deployments and more than 300 customers harness connected data with Neo4j. Neo4j
is driving a multivendor initiative to develop an ISO/WG3 standard Graph Query Language with
contribution from its Cypher language and the openCypher.org community project. Customer
references like its native storage and processing of graph data models and its full ACID-compliant,
flexible data models, and high performance for connected data. Customers often use it for real-
time recommendations, AI, graph-based search, social networking, IoT analytics, fraud detection,
and master data management.
›› IBM Cloudant is a viable cloud NoSQL offering. IBM acquired Cloudant in 2014 to expand its
DBaaS and support various NoSQL cases. IBM Cloudant is a fully managed NoSQL document
database that is compatible with Apache CouchDB. Cloudant documents are stored in triplicate
across three separate availability zones for in-region high availability and disaster recovery.
Customers use Cloudant for real-time analytics, IoT analytics, streaming analytics, and operational
workloads. IBM provides hosting, administrative tools, analytics, and support for Cloudant, and
it has deployments spread across a variety of industries, including financial services, gaming,
manufacturers, telcos, retailers, and healthcare.
Contenders
›› SAP offers a new multimodel NoSQL database: OrientDB. SAP acquired Callidus Software in
2018, which in turn acquired OrientDB in 2017.4 OrientDB is the key contributor to and supporter
of OrientDB, an open source, multimodel NoSQL database written in Java that was first released
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The Forrester Wave™: Big Data NoSQL, Q1 2019
The 15 Providers That Matter Most And How They Stack Up
in 2010. OrientDB supports schemaless, hybrid, and schema-based models and leverages SQL as
a query language in addition to Gremlin and SPARQL. OrientDB has a fully ACID-compliant graph
database to support transactional and operational use cases. Customer references mention its
multimodel engine, ease of use, reliable performance, and small footprint as core strengths. Key
use cases for OrientDB include asset management, network management, cybersecurity, social
networking, recommendation engines, and fraud detection.
›› ArangoDB offers good NoSQL databases for specific use cases. ArangoDB is a multimodel
NoSQL database that supports key-value, document, and graph data models with one database
core and a unified query language called AQL. ArangoDB provides scalable queries when working
with graph data. ArangoDB can be deployed on-premises and in the cloud, including AWS, Google
Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure. Customer references like its graph support, flexible data
model, query language, and simple approach. They use ArangoDB for transactional, operational
workloads, and they like its faster time-to-value for business initiatives.
›› RavenDB has a viable transactional NoSQL database. Hibernating Rhinos, a database provider,
offers RavenDB a NoSQL transactional database that supports document, key-value, and graph
data models. RavenDB runs on-premises and in the cloud, including AWS and Azure. It offers
support for spatial data, full-text search, popular programming and query languages, and various
security features. RavenDB declined to participate in our research.
Evaluation Overview
We evaluated vendors against 26 criteria, which we grouped into three high-level categories:
›› Current offering. Each vendor’s position on the vertical axis of the Forrester Wave graphic
indicates the strength of its current offering. Key criteria for these solutions are data types,
application development, streaming, data consistency, self-service and automation, transactions,
data security, multimodel, architecture, performance, scalability, global distributed, high availability/
disaster recovery, tooling, workloads, and use cases.
›› Strategy. Placement on the horizontal axis indicates the strength of the vendors’ strategies. We
evaluated ability to execute, road map, professional services, open source, and technical support.
›› Market presence. Represented by the size of the markers on the graphic, our market presence
scores reflect each vendor’s product revenue, install base, market awareness, partnerships, and
reach.
Forrester included 15 vendors in the assessment: Aerospike, Amazon Web Services, ArangoDB,
Couchbase, DataStax, Google, IBM, MarkLogic, Microsoft, MongoDB, Neo4j, Oracle, RavenDB, Redis
Labs, and SAP. Each of these vendors:
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The Forrester Wave™: Big Data NoSQL, Q1 2019
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›› Offers a comprehensive, enterprise-class NoSQL database. The vendor must offer the following
core NoSQL components, tools, and features: 1) support for core NoSQL features and functionality,
including high availability, concurrency, security, performance, scalability and administration; 2)
support for data storage for persistence, integrity, storage, backup, and access; 3) native tools
developed by the vendor or integration with third-party vendors to support data loading, unloading,
security management, integration, data quality, archiving, etc.; 4) support for ACID compliance
or eventually consistency; 5) support for a flexible data model; 6) support for multiple concurrent
queries, transactions, and operational reporting; and 7) the ability to be deployed on-premises, in
the cloud, or both.
›› Provides a standalone NoSQL solution. The solution isn’t technologically tied or bundled to
any particular application, product, or solution. Vendors must market the NoSQL solution as a
standalone product. A customer must be able to buy the NoSQL solution independent of other
products.
›› Has a referenceable install base. Evaluated vendors have 25 or more unique enterprise
customers using the NoSQL product that span more than one major geographical region.
›› Is publicly available. The participating vendors must have actively marketed their NoSQL product
as of November 1, 2018.
›› Has customer interest. Forrester included only vendors that were mentioned several times by
customers during Forrester inquiry calls during the past 12 months.
›› Has client inquiries and/or technologies that put the vendor on Forrester’s radar. Forrester
clients often discuss the vendors and products through inquiries and interviews; alternatively, the
vendor may, in Forrester’s judgment, warrant inclusion or exclusion in this evaluation because of
technology trends and market presence.
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The 15 Providers That Matter Most And How They Stack Up
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Supplemental Material
Online Resource
We publish all our Forrester Wave scores and weightings in an Excel file that provides detailed product
evaluations and customizable rankings; download this tool by clicking the link at the beginning of this
report on Forrester.com. We intend these scores and default weightings to serve only as a starting
point and encourage readers to adapt the weightings to fit their individual needs.
A Forrester Wave is a guide for buyers considering their purchasing options in a technology
marketplace. To offer an equitable process for all participants, Forrester follows The Forrester Wave™
Methodology Guide to evaluate participating vendors.
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The Forrester Wave™: Big Data NoSQL, Q1 2019
The 15 Providers That Matter Most And How They Stack Up
In our review, we conduct primary research to develop a list of vendors to consider for the evaluation.
From that initial pool of vendors, we narrow our final list based on the inclusion criteria. We then gather
details of product and strategy through a detailed questionnaire, demos/briefings, and customer
reference surveys/interviews. We use those inputs, along with the analyst’s experience and expertise in
the marketplace, to score vendors, using a relative rating system that compares each vendor against
the others in the evaluation.
We include the Forrester Wave publishing date (quarter and year) clearly in the title of each Forrester
Wave report. We evaluated the vendors participating in this Forrester Wave using materials they
provided to us by December 19, 2019, and did not allow additional information after that point. We
encourage readers to evaluate how the market and vendor offerings change over time.
In accordance with The Forrester Wave™ Vendor Review Policy, Forrester asks vendors to review our
findings prior to publishing to check for accuracy. Vendors marked as nonparticipating vendors in the
Forrester Wave graphic met our defined inclusion criteria but declined to participate in or contributed
only partially to the evaluation. We score these vendors in accordance with The Forrester Wave™ And
The Forrester New Wave™ Nonparticipating And Incomplete Participation Vendor Policy and publish
their positioning along with those of the participating vendors.
Integrity Policy
We conduct all our research, including Forrester Wave evaluations, in accordance with the Integrity
Policy posted on our website.
Endnotes
Source: Forrester Analytics Global Business Technographics® Data And Analytics Survey, 2018.
1
See the Forrester report “The I&O Pro’s Guide To Enterprise Open Source Cloud Adoption, Q1 2018.”
2
Source: “SAP Completes Acquisition of Callidus Software Inc.,” SAP press release, April 5, 2018 (https://news.sap.
4
com/2018/04/sap-completes-acquisition-of-callidus-software-inc/).
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