Alibaba Cloud to offer MongoDB managed service

MongoDB said that Alibaba Cloud will offer MongoDB as an authorized service in China.

The partnership gives MongoDB an entry into China and Alibaba another service to offer with a well-known database. Alibaba Cloud will manage and support customers using current and future versions of MongoDB as well as bug fixes and support.

Databases represent a competitive market and cloud computing is changing various delivery models. For instance, Amazon Web Services has launched a series of purpose-built databases including a few that compete with MongoDB as it increasingly computes with Oracle for enterprise workloads. Google and Microsoft also offer cloud databases.

For MongoDB CEO Dev Ittycheria, Alibaba Cloud can open new markets. He said in a statement that most downloads of MongoDB over the last four years have been from China. MongoDB is already available on the top three cloud providers.

Alibaba Cloud will support MongoDB features including aggregation pipeline type conversions, extensions to change streams and faster data migrations.

MongoDB has moved to become more than a document database and expand into being a data platform. Recent developments include:

• MongoDB moves beyond the database with new cloud services
• MongoDB said Q1 subscription revenue was up 82%
• MongoDB extends into a new mobile Realm
• MongoDB: The cloud keeps rolling but what about legacy modernization?
• MongoDB investing 'heavily' on R&D down under

William Blair analyst Jason Ader said in a research note that MongoDB's bet is that distinctions between relational and non relational databases (NoSQL) will fade away over time and that databases will be tied to specific applications. Ader said:

From a competitive standpoint, MongoDB does not appear concerned about legacy competitors (which it believes are stuck in the past with the inflexible, nonscalable relational paradigm) or new entrants (which it sees as subscale or niche). While cloud titans represent a long-term threat, MongoDB has not seen meaningful traction for AWS's DocumentDB offering thus far, and management stresses that most enterprise customers are hesitant of broadly using cloud-native databases for fear of lock-in. In addition, it is worth noting that MongoDB has co-sell partnerships with each of the big three cloud vendors in which their sellers get quota credit for selling Atlas, and Atlas counts against a customer's cloud credits.

For fiscal 2020, MongoDB is expected to deliver revenue of $394.1 million, up 55% from fiscal 2019.

More database:

• Amazon's consumer business says bye bye to Oracle databases, moves to AWS
• Oracle exits OpenWorld 2019 with a lot riding on Autonomous Database, Oracle Cloud conversions, services pivot
• IBM aims to meld Db2 with machine learning, data science workflows
• The state of open source databases in 2019: Multiple Databases, Clouds, and Licenses
• MongoDB databases still being held for ransom, two years after attacks started