MemSQL, the big memory technology company, today announced the release of its in-memory data tier product, which provides the on-demand insights data-driven businesses need for accelerated decision making. MemSQL combines speed and a robust SQL interface within an in-memory data tier, empowering businesses to leverage existing systems to gain actionable insights at rates 30 times faster than with disk-backed alternatives. Today, MemSQL is also announcing the close of a $5 million round of funding to date from a combination of prominent venture capitalists and angel investors.

Today’s data-driven businesses are under constant pressure to find new ways to access actionable data faster. With the Big Data explosion and data volume needs growing exponentially, many legacy database systems are simply too slow and cumbersome to handle the intensive workloads required to retrieve and process data at the speed business users require. Though disk-based solutions are no longer suitable, modern hardware offers plenty of growth, provided that data is elevated into main-memory and processed in parallel. As a result, the in-memory tier has emerged as the easiest and fastest way for companies to achieve the massive throughput and scale needed to expand their data pipelines and transfer and access data for better decision making.

“Organizations are increasingly looking for IT solutions that can address the challenges associated with the kind of extreme information management Big Data requires,” said Merv Adrian, research vice president, Gartner. “The $23.2 billion database management systems (DBMS) market is forecasted to grow by 7 percent in 2012[1] and in-memory DBMS technologies will have a significant role in that growth. Through 2015, Gartner projects that business analytics needs will drive 70 percent of investments in the expansion and modernization of information infrastructure[2], and transactional workloads will also participate, as the in-memory data tier continues to prove its value.”

Benefits and Features
MemSQL leverages a combination of lock-free data structures with an innovative coding translation process to efficiently retrieve and process data in memory. The solution is ideal for applications that require fast processing of machine data, including financial services, digital advertising, bioinformatics, government, manufacturing, and mobile applications. Key benefits and features of MemSQL include:
• Predictable sub-millisecond response times for faster retrieval and analysis on massive datasets
• Increased transactional throughput on commodity hardware
• Distributed architecture for scale
• Real-time analytics on data in flux
• Durability and replication in event of failure
• One-command install and flat learning curve for MySQL users
• Benefits of SQL at NoSQL speeds

“Quickly sifting through actionable data has become a competitive advantage in the enterprise, particularly as organizations are saddled with increasingly large and complex data sets,” said Eric Frenkiel, CEO, MemSQL. “MemSQL was designed to tackle Big Data problems by increasing an application’s throughput 30 times over and still offer SQL, unlike other solutions which are either too slow or too limited in functionality.”

Investment in MemSQL Grows
MemSQL also announced today that the company has secured a total of $5 million in funding to date. The company’s investors are a combination of prominent venture capitalists and angels, including First Round Capital, IA Ventures, NEA, SV Angel, Y Combinator, Paul Buchheit, Ashton Kutcher, Max Levchin and Aaron Levie. MemSQL intends to use the funds to scale the company’s infrastructure across sales, marketing and technical support to take advantage of market opportunities where fast analysis of machine data is crucial. Areas of focus include the capital markets side of financial services; digital advertising technology; and telecommunications and mobile services.