Xeround Add-on for Heroku Cloud Platform

An interesting challenge for organizations considering a cloud-based implementation of one or more workloads is where to put the structured data (read database-based data). It would seem logical to place that data somewhere in the cloud as well.

The questions of which database and which cloud come up pretty quickly. Maximum agility and portability would seem to require either selecting a single proprietary database that is pervasive or selecting an open source database that is likely to be available in most cloud environments. Xeround is a proponent of the second approach and has worked to make MySQL available in Amazon's EC2 environment. Recently, the company added the Heroku Cloud Platform to its list.

What Xeround has to say about adding MySQL to the Heroku platform

Xeround, the Cloud Database company, today announced the availability of their database service for MySQL-based applications as an Add-on for the Heroku cloud platform – the most popular PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) for Ruby developers.

Xeround’s Heroku add-on provides simple one-click integration between Heroku applications and Xeround’s Database-as-a-Service.

From the users’ perspective, all they need to do is add the add-on to their application from within the Heroku environment. This automatically creates a MySQL-compatible cloud database that easily connects to their application. Xeround’s cloud database enables Heroku users to take advantage of a highly available and elastic database that can grow in size and throughput as required by the application.

Snapshot analysis

MySQL has fought its way to the top of the open source database market. Sun acquired the company in January 2008. Since Sun appeared to be pretty supportive of open sources processes and business practices, the hue and cry seemed pretty muted. When Oracle acquired Sun in April 2009, the MySQL community appeared to hold its breath waiting to see what Oracle would do with Sun's open source portfolio.

Over time, it appears that Oracle is not all that interested in open source community development nor is it interested in being a good partner to the established open source communities that it "bought into." MySQL is one of those projects.

Xeround continues to focus on the open source version of MySQL and has launched it into Amazon's and, now, Heroku's clounds. The company's approach appear to focus on making the database easy to use in a cloud environment and making it available in many different cloud environments. This, of course, would make portability from one cloud service provider to another much easier. It would also make it possible to have back up environments in several clouds to improve overall reliability.

While Xeround's plans won't make the MySQL community any more comfortable with Oracle's commercial plans for the technology, for those interested in continued use of MySQL and projecting MySQL workloads into the clouds, what Xeround is doing is attractive and interesting.

If your organization has chosen MySQL as a standard, then Xeround is a company you should know.