MongoDB goes public: NoSQL database vendor MongoDB has submitted its long-anticipated filing to go public with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The S-1 form includes a wealth of information about the company's current business standing and future plans. Here's a look at the highlights.
- Long popular with developers, MongoDB's filing supplies a figure that bears it out: There have been more than 30 million downloads of its Community Server freemium edition. MongoDB is also popular with corporations, with more than 4,300 customers overall and among them greater than 50 percent of the Fortune 500.
- MongoDB says its architecture "combines the best of both relational and non-relational databases," and this is helping it poach workloads. During its fiscal 2017, about 30 percent of new business "resulted from the migration of applications from relational databases."
- The company was formed in 2007 as 10gen but changed its name to MongoDB in 2013. While based in the U.S., 35 percent of its revenue now comes from outside the country, according to the filing.
- MongoDB rolled out Atlas, its DBaaS (database as a service) cloud offering, in June 2016. As of July 31, it accounted for 5 percent of overall revenue. While describing MongoDB Atlas as a key component of its growth strategy, the company's filing also acknowledges it is still figuring out how best to market the service.
- The company now has about 820 employees, with 211 in research and development compared to 324 in sales and marketing, as of July 31.
- MongoDB has been tabbed a tech "unicorn" with respect to its high valuation, which is around $1.6 billion. But it has incurred net losses in every quarter since its inception, and was in the red $45.8 million for the six months ended July 31. The company expects its operating expenses to "increase significantly" after it goes public.
Microsoft, Facebook complete new undersea US-to-EU cable: A milestone for next-generation networking was reached this week with the completion of Marea, an undersea telecommunications cable that runs between Virginia and Spain. Marea's capacity is enormous, as described by Microsoft, who partnered with Facebook and Telefonica on its construction:
At more than 4,000 miles (6,600 kilometers) long and almost 10.25 million pounds (4.65 million kilograms) — or about the weight of 34 blue whales — the Marea cable is a feat of engineering, collaboration and innovation. The cable can transmit up to 160 terabits of data per second. That’s more than 16 million times faster than the average home internet connection, making it capable of streaming 71 million high-definition videos simultaneously.
POV: Google has set the pace for this type of investment among major Internet companies, building out an extensive undersea cable network over the past few years. But Marea is said to be the largest-capacity undersea cable built to date.
Moreover, any existing cables emanate from the New York area; by locating Marea further south, Facebook and Microsoft will gain latency benefits, since both companies have extensive data center operations there.
Finally Marea was built with an "open" design that will allow it to more easily take advantage of future innovations in networking, Microsoft says.
Legacy watch: How not to do procurement: In 2011, the Canadian government hired IBM to install PeopleSoft at a number of departments and agencies. The first stage of the project was contracted for $5.7 million, but through a series of contract amendments the total has ballooned to $185 milllion, the Canadian Broadcasting Company reports.
As it stands today, the project, dubbed Phoenix, will cover more than 100 departments. Since going live in 2016, it has been wracked by performance issues and there are 1,000 identified bugs remaining to be fixed, the CBC report says.
Sources quoted in the story suggest that scope creep, that familiar IT project management bugbear, was an issue. But it appears the Canadian government made a serious misstep when it agreed to one particular contract term, as former Treasury Board analyst Roman Klimowicz told the CBC:
The request for proposal details the government's right to extend the terms of the Phoenix maintenance and support contract "for a period of up to approximately 20 years."
Klimowicz wonders if it was a good idea to give IBM so much control over defining the project, implementing and operating it — and now attempting to fix it."There appears to be a conflict potentially," said Klimowicz, who was never involved in the Phoenix contract. "The statement of requirement could leave loopholes, could leave escape avenues in it … then IBM basically has an open bag of money to help themselves to."