As it looks to build out its web services, Apple has acquired FoundationDB, a company that specializes in speedy, durable NoSQL databases, Apple essentially confirmed to iDownloadBlog after TechCrunch first reported the news.
“Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans,” the company said in a boiler plate statement it gives when it acquires smaller companies.
Neither company has outright confirmed the deal, however a post on the FoundationDB site says it’s no longer offering downloads of its database software. Financial terms of the deal were not reported.
Here’s how FoundationDB describes its technology, for those of you who understand technical jargon:
At current (December 2014) AWS (non-spot) pricing and including enterprise FoundationDB licenses for all 480 cores with full 24/7 support this mega-cluster only costs about $150/hr. In that same hour this cluster will achieve 54 billion writes, yielding a cost-per-write of 3 nanodollars. Said another way, FoundationDB can do 3.6 million database writes per penny.
Like any technology company, downtime of web services, including the App Store and iCloud, can be embarrassing. Having servers that can smoothly handle 700 million iPhones and millions of iPads and Macs is key from stopping Apple users from using web services of competitors, like Google.
Source: TechCrunch