The Forrester Wave™: NoSQL Key-Value Databases, Q3 2014

NoSQL continues to gain strong momentum as organizations look at supporting more complex data structures, scale applications to support unpredictable workloads, and support larger volumes of data that need sub-second response times. NoSQL key-value databases address these requirements by allowing data to be stored in a schema-less model, with simple key-value pair to store, access, and manage data. Key-value databases can handle web scale — thousands of servers and millions of users — with extremely fast, optimized storage and retrieval. Top use cases for key-value database include social and mobile apps, scale-out apps, Web 2.0, line-of-business (LOB) apps, big data apps, and operational and analytical apps. To assess the state of the NoSQL key-value database market, Forrester evaluated the strengths and weakness across 57 criteria of seven leading solutions: Amazon Web Services, Aerospike, Basho Technologies, Couchbase, DataStax, MapR Technologies, and Oracle. This report details our findings on how well each solution fulfills the criteria and where it stands in relation to other offerings to help enterprise architects select the right NoSQL key-value database solution for their business needs.