The Apache Foundation has promoted Apache Ignite to become a top-level project. This open-source effort to build an in-memory data fabric was primarily driven by GridGain Systems and WANdisco.

Designed to process data in real time, Ignite stores information in memory and across multiple machines in a cluster. The software can be used for high-performance computing, streaming, or as part of a highly available service grid.

(Related: Microsoft announces Azure Service Fabric)

Dmitriy Setrakyan, vice president of the Apache Ignite project and cofounder of GridGain, said, “Apache Ignite addresses today’s fast data needs by providing a comprehensive in-memory data fabric, which includes a data grid with SQL and transactional capabilities, in-memory streaming, an in-memory file system, and more.”

WANdisco’s vice president of open-source development, Konstantin Boudnik, is also a member of the project management committee for the Apache Ignite project. “Apache Ignite leverages and integrates a host of Apache projects to solve real-time business issues, including Spark, Hadoop, YARN and Mesos,” he said.

“It’s exciting that it is graduating to a top-level project. We look forward to working further with the Apache Ignite community to make more enhancements that will benefit customers with real-time requirements and the need for highest performance and scale from their applications. ”

Apache Ignite also has supporters at Pivotal. Roman Shaposhnik, Apache Ignite mentor and director of open source at Pivotal, said, “As the speed of memory continues to outpace the capabilities of even the highest-performing disks, the importance of managing large pools of RAM at scale increases. It is essential to innovate at the same pace, and the Apache Ignite community is certainly innovative. The enthusiasm in the area of in-memory computing is unmistakable, and the ASF is where important advances happen. It is exciting to see the work of Apache communities advancing the state of fast data with projects such as Apache Ignite, Spark, Geode and Flink.”

Raul Kripalani, member of the Apache Camel project management committee, said that Ignite “harnesses the power of multiple JVMs to offer services that no modern application can do without, such as caching, streaming and workload distribution. The team is talented, the documentation is superb, and the technology has lots of potential.”

Ignite is currently at version 1.3.0.