Achieving Liftoff: Reflections on Six Amazing Months in Graph Databases

The author reminisces about 25 years ago when they were in their first Product Marketing job at Arbor Software, a NoSQL database company. Oracle's acquisition of Express, an OLAP database engine, had a significant impact on the market, making it more competitive and forcing vendors to innovate. The author notes that Amazon saw the graph market coming and made a smart bet by announcing its graph cloud service, Neptune. Graph databases have gained traction, with Forrester publishing the first-ever Forrester Wave for Graph Data Platforms in late 2020. Research firms have continued to produce research on graphs, highlighting their importance in AI/ML efforts and business outcomes. The market has seen significant investment, with over half a billion USD poured into graph database companies in the first half of 2021. Despite challenges ahead, the author is excited about the future of the graph market.