May 2022 Summaries

MongoDB has published its second corporate sustainability report, highlighting the company's commitment to corporate responsibility, diversity, inclusion, cybersecurity, and environmental impact. The future of work at MongoDB is hybrid, with a focus on flexibility and in-person interaction for building company culture. The company prioritizes diversity and inclusion through various initiatives, including employee-led affinity groups and pay equity practices. MongoDB also emphasizes the importance of privacy and security, with regular audits and certifications to ensure compliance with industry standards. Additionally, the company aims to reduce its environmental footprint by evaluating and designing programs to minimize its indirect emissions.

Fragmentation in global healthcare systems arises from a lack of interoperability among various organizations, leading to issues such as misdiagnosis and service duplication, which negatively impact patient outcomes and add economic burdens. A solution to this problem is the implementation of longitudinal patient records (LPRs), which provide a comprehensive view of a patient's healthcare history and facilitate effective data sharing across healthcare entities. Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) is a schema that supports semantic interoperability by defining standards for healthcare data exchange, allowing for effective communication between independent institutions. MongoDB, with its JSON-based document model, is well-suited for developing FHIR applications, offering tools like the Exafluence FHIR API to enhance real-time data interchange and improve project velocity. The move towards digital healthcare necessitates cloud adoption, and MongoDB Atlas supports this with a secure, multi-cloud platform compliant with industry regulations like HIPAA and GDPR. By promoting interoperable healthcare records, MongoDB aims to provide a holistic view of patient care and address the challenges of transforming legacy systems into agile, modern data platforms.

At MongoDB World’s Builder’s Fest, attendees will have the chance to build something unique through hands-on workshops and coding competitions, learning how to master features of MongoDB. The event is designed for developers at all levels, with sessions led by MongoDB experts showcasing their work, skill sets, and secret passions. Hands-on learning and tutorials will take place in the Builder’s Pods, where attendees can participate in mini workshops and learn from engineers like David Bradford and John Page. Additionally, there will be coding challenges and gaming competitions on two large stages, allowing participants to show off their skills and compete with others. The event aims to provide a fun and collaborative environment for builders to feed off each other’s vibes and collaborate.

MongoDB employees, Zaira Pirzada and Kailie Yuan, reflect on Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, sharing their personal stories of identity, culture, and the struggles they faced growing up in diverse communities. Both women highlight the importance of recognizing and celebrating individual experiences within the broader Asian American and Pacific Islander community, as well as acknowledging the challenges that many face due to stereotypes and discrimination. Zaira Pirzada shares her journey as a Pakistani-American woman navigating multiple cultures and languages, while Kailie Yuan discusses her experiences with perfectionism and cultural expectations in Chinese families, highlighting the need for greater understanding and empathy. Through their stories, both women aim to raise awareness about the complexities of Asian American identity and the importance of inclusivity and representation.

The White House has issued an executive order requiring software vendors to provide a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) to improve the nation's cybersecurity. The SBOM is a list of ingredients used by software, including third-party commercial off-the-shelf and open source software components. This transparency in the software supply chain is seen as a critical tool for improving security. The order affects every organization that does or seeks to do business with the federal government. Experts agree that SBOMs are essential for making the world of software more secure, but challenges remain, such as how to implement and use them effectively, especially for legacy systems. Developers play a crucial role in supply chain security, and tools like SBOMs can help determine exposure to risks or prevent attacks. The list of minimum requirements for SBOMs is expected to expand, including additional identifiers and practices around dependency trees. Perfection in implementing SBOMs may be achieved when they are naturally embedded in the modern software development lifecycle, with automated tooling and package ecosystems.

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is driving a new era of manufacturing, unlocking powerful new use cases to forge new revenue streams, create holistic business insights, and provide agility based on global and consumer demands. MongoDB's flexible, highly available, and scalable data platform allows for end-to-end data integration using a four-step framework that involves connecting devices, collecting and storing data, processing and analyzing it, and creating unique solutions through access to transformational data. The first step of the process is Connect, which establishes an interface with devices to "listen" and "talk" to them, often using MQTT protocol, to gather and store data in an efficient manner. This step requires setting up a remote MQTT broker, testing its connectivity, creating an MQTT bridge to relay messages between brokers, and sending MQTT messages to the device(s) to start processing data.

Open banking refers to the practice of making financial data easily accessible to third-party service providers, allowing them to initiate transactions on behalf of consumers. This revolution in the fintech industry presents both challenges and opportunities for established banks and disruptors alike. Challenges include navigating evolving regulatory standards, maintaining compliance with emerging regulations, and dealing with legacy architectures that can hinder innovation and operational efficiency. However, open banking also offers the potential for rapid innovation, allowing institutions to experiment with new technologies and revenue streams, and to scale quickly in response to changing demand. To future-proof their strategy, banks should start by defining a clear open banking strategy, viewing regulations as accelerators rather than inhibitors, simplifying and unifying their data, considering scalability, and striving for real-time data delivery.

Avion is a digital user story mapping tool that helps product teams break down complexity, map out user journeys, build out the entire scope of their product, and decide what to deliver and in what order. It was founded by James Sear and Tim Ramage with the goal of providing an intuitive and enjoyable user story mapping experience for agile teams. The founders were interested in the product management side of delivery and found that user story mapping was a valuable technique for pulling together all core user journeys, scope of features, and how to deliver them. Avion has evolved from a collaborative tool for product teams to a more comprehensive platform with integration with traditional backlog tools like Jira and Azure DevOps. The company faces challenges in a crowded productivity space but believes its unique value proposition allows it to stand out. Avion has found MongoDB Atlas to be an excellent solution for production scaling issues, providing features such as usage graphs and metrics that help pinpoint problems, and seamless upgrades to the latest version of the database.

The new Embedding Page in MongoDB Atlas Charts streamlines the embedding experience for users, providing a dedicated hub for managing embedded charts and dashboards. This page allows users to view their current embedding environment, search and filter charts, and access settings without having to navigate through multiple pages. The new feature also includes authentication settings, enabling developers to share items in a safe and controlled environment. With the introduction of this dedicated hub, MongoDB Atlas Charts aims to simplify the process for users and allow them to focus on building great software.

The Insider's Guide to MongoDB World 2022' highlights the upcoming event, which will take place at New York City’s Javits Center from June 7 to June 9. The conference features a packed schedule of keynotes, workshops, talks, technical panels, networking, and community building events. Keynote speakers include MongoDB CEO Dev Ittycheria, CTO Mark Porter, chief product officer Sahir Azam, and renowned technologist Ray Kurzweil. Talks and workshops are divided into eight tracks, including Partner talks, the MongoDB Developer Data Platform, Community Cafe, Governance, Compliance, and Security, and Modern Application Development. The conference also includes special events such as Chalk Talks, Jumpstarts, Product Announcements, and a hallway track for networking and serendipitous interactions with attendees, speakers, customers, partners, and industry leaders. Registration is now open, with discounts available for early registration.

A Hub for Eco-Positivity` is an online platform that connects over 13,000 companies, NGOs, and governmental agencies across 200-plus countries to promote global environmental change. The founder of the platform, Natalia Goncharova, uses MongoDB as a cloud-based database with strong querying abilities to facilitate search and discovery. The flexible schema of MongoDB enables her team to make changes on the fly, which is crucial for the platform's growth and development. By leveraging MongoDB's document-oriented data model and community version, EcoHub can expand its database while maintaining high performance and scalability. With a commitment to sustainability, Natalia Goncharova aims to create a sustainable future by connecting like-minded organizations and individuals worldwide.

The tension between agility, security, and operational uptime is a common challenge for IT organizations. The perception that InfoSec and IT operations teams want to restrict developers' innovation by imposing old paradigms is outdated. In reality, InfoSec and DevOps teams aim for agile development with safety. The shared responsibility model enables this balance by abstracting granular controls from developers, allowing them to focus on building applications while secure defaults are in place at every level. This approach provides empowerment and confidence for developers, while ensuring the security necessary for SecOps and DevOps. By recognizing roles and responsibilities, cloud vendors like MongoDB must ensure security and availability, and customers must protect their data. The security defaults in MongoDB Atlas enable developers to be agile without sacrificing risk reduction.

Innovation is a high priority for most organizations due to its link to success across various measures. However, delivering innovation through software is challenging and requires internal teams to build unique solutions. A recent survey of 2,000 IT professionals in the Asia Pacific region found that working with data is the hardest part of building applications, with complex data architectures being a significant issue. The majority of developers' time is spent on building new features rather than maintaining existing systems, highlighting the need for efficient data management and innovation strategies to overcome common blockers such as developer workloads, legacy technologies, and technical debt.

Semeris, a startup, aims to demystify legal documents by utilizing the latest AI and NLP techniques. They use MongoDB Atlas Search to help customers quickly analyze documents and extract data. Semeris CEO Peter Jasko explains that his company helps investor banking and lawyer clients analyze 500-1,000 pages of documentation in under two hours, previously taking 7-8 hours. The value of data is crucial for Semeris as it builds models around publicly available documentation to analyze less seen documents. Semeris's partnership with venture capital firm QVentures has helped them uncover contacts within the market and build out their technology on the MongoDB platform. Jasko praises MongoDB's scalability, ease of hiring tech developers familiar with the technology, cloud agnosticism, and seamless online upgrades without customer impact or downtime. Semeris uses MongoDB Atlas Search to retrieve thousands of data points from multiple documents, indexing capability, and quickly providing customers with the information they need.

Lucile Tournier, a former Enterprise Account Executive at MongoDB France, has accelerated her career by joining the company in 2020. She was drawn to MongoDB's innovative technology and fast-paced environment, which offered her a unique blend of established processes and startup spirit. Through intense onboarding, Lucile quickly improved her skills, signed major contracts, and expanded existing territories, becoming self-aware through feedback culture. Her leadership team provided trust, support, and guidance, enabling her transition to Regional Director after 18 months as an Enterprise Account Executive. Lucile attributes success in the role to hard work, learning, questioning oneself, and moving forward, with transparency being a key aspect of the Sales team culture.

If MongoDB had been available in the Star Wars universe, the events of the movies might have unfolded differently. The knowledge of the Jedi Order would not have been erased, and their reputation would remain intact. This is because MongoDB Atlas's high availability feature would have ensured that the data was recoverable, even if Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader destroyed evidence of the Jedi Order. Additionally, the security features of MongoDB Atlas, such as isolation, authorization, and encryption, would have prevented unauthorized access to sensitive information, like the energy shield generator on Endor. The Data API feature would have allowed for direct access to data over the internet, making R2-D2's role less crucial in certain situations. Furthermore, sharding technology would have enabled faster search and retrieval of data, potentially leading to Luke Skywalker being found sooner. Overall, the power of MongoDB Atlas could have changed the course of events in the Star Wars universe, saving millions of lives and preventing the rise of the First Order.

Lucile Tournier, une Entreprise Account Executive qui a rejoint MongoDB France en 2020, a rapidement progressé à travers ses fonctions et est devenue Regional Director. Elle a partagé son parcours avec l'équipe commerciale de MongoDB, expliquant comment elle a rejoint l'entreprise et pourquoi elle était intéressée par elle. Lucile a déclaré que la technologie, les processus et le côté 1000 à l'heure de MongoDB étaient des facteurs qui lui ont attirée. Elle a également souligné l'importance de la culture du feedback et de la bienveillance au sein de l'équipe. Avec une gestion à l'écoute et un support de ses managers, Lucile a réussi à atteindre son objectif en promotion, démontrant ainsi que le travail, l'apprentissage et la confiance sont essentiels pour réussir dans ce domaine.