Who’s Using MongoDB and Why?

MongoDB is among the most popular NoSQL databases available today and you may be curious as to whether this technology is the best possible option for working with big data or simply a buzz-driven flash-in-the-pan.

A large and growing list of organizations now using MongoDB offer some insights when determining whether MongoDB is right for your enterprise.

The list of users includes industry leaders with recognizable brand names such as The Weather Channel, City of Chicago, Bosch Software Innovations, and Chico’s FAS, Inc.

Organizations are using the software for creating new platforms across varied areas, including for underpinning e-commerce or analytics.

At a speech in September 2015, Dev Ittycheria, MongoDB’s chief executive officer, stated that the project is designed as technology “for startups that want to be enterprises and enterprises that want to be startups.”

One such startup is x.ai. The developer of an AI-powered personal assistant (AI stands for artificial intelligence) says it uses MongoDB to support its natural language processing, supervised learning, analytics, and email. The company’s founder, Alex Poon, told eweek the flexibility of its schema and the simplicity made MongoDB “fundamental to our success early on, when we were changing the data model weekly, and remains so today, with our focus on continuous integration through weekly sprints.”

Other MongoDB users include:

• ShopStage, which built its platform for retailers on Mongo DB. The platform is designed to connect them with their customers across all digital channels for upselling and cross-selling either online or in stores.

• Orange Digital, the subsidiary of France Telecom supplying digital service in the United Kingdom and Europe, moved its databases from MySQL to a combination of MongoDB and Amazon Web Services when it needed a new database able to scale and meet its precise performance and availability needs.

• IBM, which now supports MongoDB on the mainframe.

• AHL Man Group, a financial services firm, replaced several different relational databases with a single MongoDB platform its financial market quantitative analysts can use for algorithmic trading modeling.

• The city of Chicago built its WindyGrid—a real-time analytics system designed to help department mangers identify issues from multiple sources (311 and 911 calls as well as Twitter posts) and coordinate responses among departments—on MongoDB.

One high-profile user promoted by MongoDB is Urban Outfitters, the retail company responsible for brands Anthropologie, Free People, and Urban Outfitters. It uses MongoDB for its e-commerce platform to quickly release apps based on its flexibility and performance. These have included offerings such as in-store pickup for online purchases. Rob Frieman, director of e-commerce at Urban Outfitters, at an industry event, stated:

With MongoDB, we’re using a product proven to support our brands’ performance needs throughout the year and especially at peak loads during the holidays. We can develop new features, adapt to changing requirements and spend more time delivering value.

Other larger retailers—The Gap, Chico’s, Saks Fifth Avenue, Gilt, eBay and Under Armour—are using MongoDB in a similar fashion.

MongoDB represents a modern solution for a range of big data challenges, Ittycheria stated in a press release.

By speeding up development and simplifying operations to ensure scale and performance that companies demand, MongoDB delivers a sophisticated solution that addresses big data requirements while inspiring new ideas for applications major brands can’t live without.

However, some companies have been hard-pressed to find database professionals with the needed expertise to work effectively with MongoDB. Remote staffing enables them to find Mongo-experienced experts able to supplant their existing staff. Large companies are increasingly interested in securing operational support—attending to alerts, updating software, and applying security patches, etc.—for their MongoDB installations.

To learn more about our remote database services and how our experts can help with your ongoing database operations, please contact Datavail to discuss a custom solution designed for your enterprise. Our Mongo DB experts can help provide the support and services you need to successfully move to this NoSQL database.

If you’d like to learn more about MongoDB, please download our whitepaper MongoDB: Is it Right for You?. For more solutions to both common and advanced DBA-related questions, please visit Datavail’s blog.