March 2022 Summaries

### Consider Your Cloud Backup Strategy on World Backup Day, March 31 World Backup Day, marked every March 31, reminds all of us of the risk and vulnerability of the data stored on our devices and systems. Data loss happens every day for a variety of reasons, including human error and ransomware attacks, which have become increasingly expensive due to businesses having deeper pockets to pay larger ransoms. Having a backup copy of data can help a business recover clean copies of data after it’s been corrupted or lost. A backup and disaster recovery strategy is necessary to protect mission-critical data against these types of risks. Taking regular backups offers other advantages, such as creating new environments for development, staging, or QA without impacting production. The 3-2-1 backup rule has been widely adopted but may not be practical for modern IT environments due to the criticality of systems and the need for faster recovery times. Cloud providers can offer reliable service levels, but businesses must have a backup strategy updated to factor in cloud workloads. Cross-cloud data protection is essential to ensure data availability during outages with a single cloud provider. Developing flexibility in the cloud is critical to leverage the best features and cost efficiencies from each provider. MongoDB Atlas provides point-in-time recovery, security features, built-in replication, backups, and fine-grained monitoring to protect against data corruption and ensure always-on availability.

The MongoDB team has released a new version of the Spark Connector, version 10.0, which offers tighter integration with Spark Structured Streaming and improved compatibility with Databricks' updated Data Source API. The new connector uses a different namespace than the previous version, allowing for coexistence in the same Spark application. This release provides better support for stream processing and conversion of existing batch jobs into streaming jobs using Structured Streaming. The new version is not intended to replace the current MongoDB Spark Connector but rather offers additional features and improvements.

These women are leading teams and growing their careers at MongoDB, a company that values its diverse and inclusive culture. Reba Cox, Director of Procurement, has expanded her leadership to three functions in four years, emphasizing the importance of compassion and developing team members. Anokhee Mepani, Director of Operations, Technical Services, prioritizes learning through inclusion and seeking novel solutions to challenges. Cristina Castillo, Director of Sales Development, EMEA, stresses the need for self-awareness, trust-building, and delegation to support her team's growth. Melissa Mahoney, Lead Technical Writer, Cloud, leads a talented team with a passion for mentorship, emphasizing the importance of empathy and time management in leadership.

MongoDB Atlas Search is a fully-managed Apache Lucene search index that embeds itself alongside the database, simplifying the technology stack for developers and application owners. By integrating the database, search engine, and sync pipeline into a single platform, developers can eliminate the synchronization tax, ship new features faster, and remove operational heavy-lifting. The benefits of Atlas Search have led industry sectors and geographies to make the switch from bolt-on search engines like Elasticsearch and Solr, which introduced complexity and risk. A 5-step guide is available to help users plan and execute their migration project, with examples of customers who have made the switch and guidance on getting started with Atlas Search.

Dashboard Embedding Comes to Charts is a new feature in MongoDB Atlas Charts that allows users to easily embed charts and dashboards into any webpage or application. This feature enables customers to share dynamic, live visualizations with a wide audience while maintaining data security. With dashboard embedding, users can now easily share real-time information internally within their companies or externally with their customers. The feature is easy to use, provides flexibility for visual customizations, and supports various authentication options. Users can enable authenticated or unauthenticated embedding, choose configuration options such as dark mode and background color selection, and resize dashboards responsively based on screen size. The new feature was one of the most frequently requested features in Atlas Charts and is now available for users to try out.

Ultrahuman and MongoDB Partner to Raise Fitness Awareness` Ultrahuman is a metabolic fitness startup that aims to help its users become the healthiest version of themselves by measuring the impact of food, activity, sleep, and stress on their body with glucose biomarkers. The platform was founded in 2020 by Vatsal Singhal and Mohit Kumar, who have experience working with MongoDB. Ultrahuman uses a CGM device to monitor glucose levels in real-time and provides insights on optimal nutrition, exercise, and lifestyle choices. With nearly 100 million glucose points and growing exponentially, the platform is creating an impact in people's lives by leveraging insights from this data. Vatsal advises aspiring founders to get early feedback from their users and constantly iterate with alpha users.

Okta Digital Breach Investigation | MongoDB Blog` We are aware of reports of a potential compromise of Okta, and as a precaution, the MongoDB Information Security team has started an investigation to determine if our products or systems were impacted. At this time, there is no evidence that MongoDB or its products have been compromised. As a result, we have increased situational-awareness monitoring to better understand the rapidly changing environment and are examining our systems for any potential signs of malicious behavior. We will share any updates about the investigation on our blog, and customers with concerns can contact us at [email protected].

Introducing MongoDB's Prometheus Monitoring Integration allows users to view MongoDB hardware and monitoring metrics within Prometheus, providing a secure and supported environment for complete feature parity with Atlas metrics. The integration enables users to configure the integration and set up custom scraping intervals for their Atlas Admin API endpoints, ensuring consistently updated views in Prometheus. This integration is free and available for use with MongoDB Atlas (clusters M10 and higher) and Cloud Manager, promoting the freedom to run anywhere and view data in preferred monitoring solutions.

MongoDB has taken action to comply with new sanctions from the US and internationally by shutting down its business operations in Russia and Belarus. The company will not sell cloud services or software to customers in these countries. MongoDB is also providing support to Ukraine through donations to crisis organizations, free Atlas credits for a project helping refugees find housing, and offering free credits to organizations developing humanitarian software projects.

MongoDB and AWS Expand Global Collaboration` MongoDB and AWS are expanding their global partnership to provide customers with deeper, broader technical integrations, improved migration workloads from legacy data infrastructure to modern MongoDB Atlas, and more. The two companies have worked closely together for over 15 years to ensure developers enjoy an exceptional experience working with MongoDB. Their guiding principle is customer obsession, which has resulted in a strong partnership that has been refined over time through joint product development, marketing, and sales efforts. This collaboration has led to the creation of various services such as AWS Wavelength, Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose, and AWS App Runner, and has enabled customers like Shutterfly, Cox Automotive, Pitney Bowes, and Nesto Software to run MongoDB Atlas on AWS. The partnership aims to make it even easier for customers to migrate from expensive legacy data infrastructure to modern cloud-based solutions.

The healthcare industry can benefit from adopting platform thinking, which involves integrating multiple applications and services into a seamless digital experience for patients and providers. Digital platforms provide a single point of entry, leveraging an organization's technology and data to deliver new products and services. Platform thinking requires a platform perspective, which differentiates organizations from competitors by integrating unique applications and services into digital platforms. Digital platforms bring complexities such as stitching together data and functionality across siloed sources in real-time, requiring architectures that free developers from underlying application landscape complexities. An Operational Data Layer (ODL) is critical to support digital platforms, providing a system of record for new features and an integration layer between existing systems and third-party services. A MongoDB ODL serves as the best technology to underpin digital platforms and ecosystems due to its inherent flexibility and ability to seamlessly integrate complex data from various sources in real-time.

The MongoDB Stable API provides a subset of commonly used commands that remain consistent across new database versions, decoupling the application lifecycle from the database lifecycle. This allows customers to upgrade to the latest version without introducing breaking changes to their code base. The MongoDB Rapid Release cadence offers quarterly releases with the latest features for Atlas customers on Dedicated Tier clusters, allowing them to choose between a Major Release track with annual updates or a Rapid Release track with more frequent updates. Customers can opt in to the Rapid Release track to get the latest features from MongoDB, and those who switch tracks will automatically go to the next Rapid Release. The Stable API provides consistency across versions for customers to take advantage of MongoDB's new release cadence.

Okra is a Nigerian startup that aims to digitize financial services for Africa by providing a platform for users to access their money through modern means, such as mobile apps and internet banking. The company is built on top of MongoDB and uses its API to empower developers in Nigeria to build personalized digital financial services with seamless access to inclusive financial data and secure payments. Okra's co-founder and CEO, Fara Ashiru Jituboh, started the company after realizing the need for a more accessible and efficient way to manage finances in Africa, where many people lack access to real-time financial data and traditional banking methods are often cumbersome. With 99.9% guaranteed uptime, Okra's platform is designed to be secure and reliable, allowing users to easily manage their finances and access credit foundations. Fara Ashiru Jituboh emphasizes the importance of building a strong technology foundation that aligns with business goals, and advises other founders to prioritize scaling their technology while focusing on critical issues that can impact their business.

Unqork + MongoDB: Use a single view of the customer to enhance the user experience` is about how Unqork's no-code application platform and MongoDB can help financial services companies unify disparate data sources, create a single view of the customer, and build personalized experiences. This combination enables firms to efficiently surface relevant customer information, inform strategies, and optimize processes. With MongoDB, companies can build a single view of anything faster with a smaller investment, integrate data across the enterprise, and improve search and filtering capabilities. The Unqork platform empowers organizations to rapidly build custom applications in complex industries like financial services, integrating disparate ecosystems, orchestrating complex business processes, and creating branded digital experiences at scale. By combining MongoDB's unified single view functionality with Unqork's accelerated development capabilities, companies can effectively use data to enhance user experiences and secure market share. The potential benefits include lower administrative costs, increased customer loyalty and retention, more granular customer insights, and the flexibility to unify client experiences and future-proof firms to agilely pivot to address changing needs.

MongoDB.local Paris 2022 will take place on April 5, 2022, at the 3 Mazarium in Paris, after a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic. The event aims to help developers discover new products and techniques, with a mix of educational content, client testimonials, technical demos, and tutorials. In-person attendees will have the opportunity to network and discuss their use cases with MongoDB experts. The event will also be available virtually, allowing more people to participate, and sessions will be recorded for later viewing. New product features, such as "rapid releases," will be showcased, including updates on MongoDB 5.0 and its subsequent versions. Workshops, tutorials, and Q&A sessions with product experts will provide hands-on experience with MongoDB products like Atlas and Search. Client testimonials from companies like Renault, Cdiscount, and Lactalis will also be shared, offering insights into how customers are using MongoDB to solve real-world problems.

Speed Up Your Workflow with Query Library in Atlas Charts`: The Query Library in Atlas Charts is designed to speed up the workflow of building charts by providing a more efficient way to work with MongoDB's query language (MQL). It allows users to write and save custom queries, which can be easily loaded from any dashboard, making it easier to share and reuse queries across teams. This feature simplifies data visualization and analytics on Atlas data, enabling users to quickly make business decisions and perform analytics on their applications. With Query Library, users can quickly get in and out of their data, saving time and increasing productivity.