March 2017 Summaries

When I was shopping last week, I noticed a significant difference between the checkout times of Walgreens and Safeway. Both were quick to scan and bag my items, but Walgreens processed my chip-based credit card in seconds, while Safeway took around 10 seconds. This highlights the importance of operational efficiency in retail stores, as proven by a study on 37 US retailers that found those focusing on operational improvements were most successful. Kroger's implementation of hi-tech solutions reduced customer wait times from four minutes to 26 seconds, contributing to its revenue growth. High-speed transactions are necessary for many businesses, including retail, financial, e-commerce, entertainment, transportation, and travel, with Redis customers using the Redise Platform to power these transactions. The Redis team has published a technical white paper on managing high-speed transactions in Redis.

RedisJSON is a Redis module that provides native JSON capabilities, allowing developers to store and manipulate JSON data efficiently. It offers a new data type tailored for fast and efficient manipulation of JSON documents, with an API designed to be intuitive for users coming from the JSON world or vice versa. RedisJSON also boasts impressive performance benchmarks compared to other methods of storing JSON data in Redis. Developers can use it with any Redis client that supports modules or allows sending raw commands.

Infrastructure diversification is becoming increasingly important as developers need to build scalable and professional-grade software. Today marks a significant step in this evolution with the availability of Redis Enterprise on the DC/OS (Data Center Operating System) platform. Open-source Redis, first developed in 2009, has gained popularity for its high performance and ease of use. It remains the most powerful database on the market today, with over 60,000 customers globally. Redis Enterprise enhances open-source deployments by making scaling effortless and transparent to users while adding unmatched resilience and high availability. This week, Mesosphere released DC/OS v1.9, an infrastructure-agnostic platform for building, deploying, and elastically scaling modern applications and big data services. By enabling Redis Enterprise Pack on DC/OS, users gain high performance, high availability, and seamless scaling of Redis with Mesosphere's sophisticated technology. Redis joins other popular services available in the DC/OS ecosystem, including Spark, HDFS, and Kafka. As adoption of Redis continues to accelerate, users choose Redis for its ability to ensure enterprise-grade scaling and availability for their mission-critical applications. With the availability of Redis within Mesosphere DC/OS, customers have more choice and flexibility in how they deploy Redis. Together, both companies are powering digital transformation and solving complex data issues that modern enterprises must address.

The Forrester Wave report highlights the growing importance of in-memory databases, with Redis receiving the highest ratings for performance, analytics support, and use cases. The definition of an in-memory database has expanded to include mission-critical data handling and cloud adoption. Despite being a new entrant in the report, Redis was positioned ahead of other pure-play vendors due to its standalone solution offering. However, Forrester's emphasis on professional services and support may not align with industry trends favoring easy implementation and limited support. The report appreciates Open Source as a strategy for success, which Redis has successfully leveraged to broaden adoption and harness innovation from the developer community. Ultimately, Redis is recognized as the leading provider of in-memory database technology worldwide, with its scalable, highly available, and cost-effective offering, Redis Enterprise - Redise, being the most popular deployment scenario.

Redis enthusiasts gathered for a day of sessions about their favorite in-memory database. The event featured over 200 attendees and included 13 sessions on various topics, presented by Redis users and developers. Keynote speakers included the creator of Redis, Salvatore antirez Sanfilippo, who shared his philosophy and near-future plans for the database. Other notable presentations covered topics such as Multi-Master Replication, Redis modules, and use cases in enterprise environments. The event also featured a guided tour through the rapid rise of Redis modules and a presentation on how a company used Redis to power its real-time communication platform.