Data is crucial. And, that makes your Database equally crucial. 

Every organisation’s most valuable asset today is data, an integral requisite for real-time insights and decision making. Driving businesses to be on the constant lookout for newer and highly versatile open source options. For your next project, if you are looking to implement open source databases, here are some popular open source database software choices. 

But first, why open source databases?

For a long while, the IT world was ruled by databases like Oracle and Microsoft SQL, eventually leading to a slower pace in innovation and agility. This is one of the key reasons why open source has gained much popularity in the past few years – developers and enterprises wanting to go beyond the conventional choices while creating unique solutions capable of addressing today’s challenges. 

Besides, open source databases are preferred for their lower upfront costs and excellent community support. Being available in both community and enterprise-grade versions, it has overtaken its proprietary counterparts pretty quickly. 

In a recent open source survey for SEA and India, 74% of the participating organisations said the adoption of Open Source databases will substantially increase in 2022. While 51% said there will be little or no growth of proprietary Databases in their organisation in the coming year. If the stats are anything to go by, the organizations are clearly picking agile and scalable database software options. 

Let’s look at some key open source database technologies and how each of them aligns to different business requirements. 

1. PostgreSQL

Known as the world’s most popular open source database, PostgreSQL is used by some of the largest businesses in the world today. It offers the best in class database management software both on-premises and in the cloud and is known for its reliability, performance and robust features. It can be easily powered on the platform of your choice – VM, Kubernetes or Cloud. 

Top Features of PostgreSQL:

1. Oracle alternative – It is the most preferred database to migrate to from legacy Oracle, providing a better, new-age and cost-effective solution
2. Comes with solid features aimed to help developers build applications, administrators to protect data and build fault-tolerant environments
3. Manage your data, no matter how small or big the dataset
4. Easily works on popular operating systems, and can easily run it on Windows, Mac OS X, and all Linux and Unix distributions
5. Allows to define custom data types, build custom functions, and write codes in additional programming languages like Python, without a need to recompile the database

Top users of PostgreSQL:

Apple, IMDB, Instagram, Skype, Spotfiy, and many others

PostgreSQL Case studies:

Besides being used by global giants, it also has a wide preference in Asia across BFSI, Telcos, Retail, Government sectors. Sharing some interesting regional case studies:

The Philippine Stock Exchange benefits from highly available PostgreSQL solution. Here 

Ashnik Migrates Indonesian Bank Off Oracle and helps save huge licensing costs. Here

Data Migration and Automation simplified for a multi-national mobile advertising company. Here

2. MongoDB

MongoDB has seen a massive surge in popularity with a majority of businesses adopting it due to its ease of implementation that combines performance, higher availability and automatic scaling. It helps in enabling users in modernizing existing relational workloads and is built for enterprises that are building internet and business applications with the need for evolution at a quicker rate. 

MongoDB Atlas is one the most innovative cloud database service on the market, with unmatched data distribution and mobility across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, built-in automation for resource and workload optimization, and so much more. 

Top Features of MongoDB:

1. Designed with developer productivity and flexibility in mind – with out-of-the-box capabilities, allowed on site or in the public cloud
2. Document oriented – Stores data in the form of documents instead of tables like in RDBMS 
3. Provides horizontal scaling and load balancing capabilities, giving application developers immense flexibility and scalability
4. Schema-less Database – accomodates multiple documents in a collection, with different keys, giving MongoDB the added advantage and flexibility with data
5. Supports three different aggregations – a) aggregation pipeline, b) map-reduce function, and, c) single-purpose aggregation method

Top users of MongoDB:

eBay, Metlife, Forbes, Toyota, Sanoma, Boots, Shopline and more

MongoDB Case studies:

Ashnik helps Indonesia’s leading Insurance Company to adopt Open Source for improved Customer Experience (CX). Here 

Modern DevOps teams use MongoDB Atlas to enhance productivity. Here 

3. Redis

Picked as the most-loved database for 5 years running by users, Redis is at the center of its growing community of developers, architects, and contributors. Modern businesses depend on the power of real-time data and Redis offers super-fast access to data without the need for relying on in-memory storage. This in-memory data store delivers superior performance, is highly reliable, offers unparalleled flexibility for personalization, machine learning, IoT, search, e-commerce, social, and metering solutions.

Top Features of Redis:

1. Flexible data structures, helps with a vast variety of data structures to meet your application needs
2. Offers the best in class memory, and schema-less designs to help you adapt to your data’s needs
3. Highly available and scalable – allowing you and your teams to build highly available solutions with efficient performance and reliability 
4. Simple to use – enables to write traditionally complex codes with lesser, simpler lines
5. Redis data resides in memory – enabling it to support a magnitude of operations with  faster response time

Top users of MongoDB:

Uber, Airbnb, Shopify, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, GitHub, Snapchat, Craigslist, and more.

The top use cases of Redis are caching, gaming leaderboards, ML, geospatial, and real-time analytics 

Redis Case studies:

Redis helps retailers to successfully modernize and migrate to the cloud in today’s competitive cloud environment. Here 

How Freshworks scaled from 30 to 500 million requests per day. Here

Redis scales Groww’s investing platform to empower 10 Million+ customers. Here

4. Elasticsearch

Is Elasticsearch a database? Simply put, yes it can be used as a ‘document’-store-type-NoSQL Database. Elasticsearch can help collect, process and analyze data from multiple sources by storing data in a single centralized data store, even as the data keeps growing. 

The speed and scalability of Elasticsearch and its ability to index variations of content ensures it can be used for a number of use cases: Application Performance monitoring, Search capabilities, Log aggregation and log analytics, Security, Business analytics, Container monitoring, Geospatial data analysis and unified obervability platform for infra, system and application logs.

Top users of Elasticsearch:

Netflix, Facebook, Uber, Shopify, Instacart, Udemy, Slack and more

Elasticsearch Case studies:

Ashnik designs an Infrastructure Log Monitoring platform using ELK for a leading Bank in Asia. Here

Indonesia’s leading Insurance Company uses Open Source to improve Customer Experience (CX). Here

If you are looking to get subscription, support or services on any of the mentioned open source database software, talk to Ashnik – a leading open source solutions company in Southeast Asia and India, offering full-fledged open source technology marketplace, support, solutions, and services for consulting, managed, technical, training and more. Get in touch