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    GridGain In-Memory Software Becomes Apache Ignite Project

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    There’s a lot of agreement that memory is going to play a much bigger role in driving the performance of enterprise applications going forward, but little to no agreement over what form that will take.

    While major vendors have been making the case for forklift upgrades to in-memory databases, GridGain opted to develop in-memory software that can be inserted between existing applications and their data sources. After making that software available under an open source license earlier this year, this week GridGain announced that its software is now an open source project called Ignite that will be managed under the auspices of the Apache Foundation.

    GridGain CEO Abe Kleinfeld says that since making its software available under an open source license, downloads of its in-memory data fabric software have reached 7,000 to 8,000 per month. Kleinfeld attributes all that interest to the simple fact that IT organizations want to be able to take advantage of more memory without having to rewrite existing applications and deploy entirely new classes of databases to support them.

    In-memory Software

    Kleinfeld says that GridGain will continues to sell an enterprise edition of its software, but as an Apache project he expects the number of developers willing to contribute code to the ongoing development of Ignite will rise considerably.

    In the meantime, Kleinfeld says in-memory data fabric software creates a layer of isolation that allows IT organizations to think more strategically about how they want to make the shift to in-memory computing. After all, memory may be the new disk when it comes to primary storage, but if it can only be applied to new applications, the significance of that capability across the enterprise is not going to be nearly as broad and deep as it should be.

    Mike Vizard
    Mike Vizard
    Michael Vizard is a seasoned IT journalist, with nearly 30 years of experience writing and editing about enterprise IT issues. He is a contributor to publications including Programmableweb, IT Business Edge, CIOinsight and UBM Tech. He formerly was editorial director for Ziff-Davis Enterprise, where he launched the company’s custom content division, and has also served as editor in chief for CRN and InfoWorld. He also has held editorial positions at PC Week, Computerworld and Digital Review.

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