Xeround announces MySQL for the Cloud Service

Xeround is addressing issues organizations have had when deploying database-based applications in cloud computing environments — locality of data and database performance — by offering a new service that the company is calling "MySQL for the Cloud."

What Xeround has to say about the MySQL for the Cloud service

Xeround, the Cloud Database company, today officially announced that their “MySQL for the Cloud” service is a multi-geographic cloud database, with their service now available on Amazon in Europe as well as North America.

Xeround’s multi-geographic capability lets organizations choose to run their database instances closest to wherever their applications are running. By having their applications as well as databases co-hosted on the same cloud and in the same geographical region, companies that rely on Xeround can address the key issue of performance in a cloud environment and significantly decrease latency of their applications. When signing up for Xeround, customers can select the data center closest to their applications.

In addition to offering multiple data center locations, the new beta will support multiple cloud providers over the next year. Because Xeround’s cloud database is agnostic to your choice of cloud provider, those that choose Xeround can avoid vendor lock-in and migrate seamlessly between different clouds.

Snapshot analysis

A comment I've often heard when discussing a cloud computing deployment option with executives of multi-national organizations is both their concerns about data locality laws (laws saying that data must be stored in the local country) and database performance. Xeround appears to have heard the same comments and has developed a Software as a Service (SaaS) offering to address those requirements.

While this is a workable approach, it is one that every service provider has either already started offering on one form or another or could easily copy. So, Xeround is going to have to move rapidly if it is going to make any headway against larger service providers.

This move treats the symptom but doesn't really address one of the underlying issues, the requirements to store certain data in specific places some countries are placing on organizations working within their borders. This issue creates problems for end user organizations, suppliers of systems and software and service providers.

Xerond's new service offering is certainly interesting and worthy of evaluation.