The Coolest Database System Companies Of The 2023 Big Data 100

Part 2 of CRN’s Big Data 100 takes a look at the vendors solution providers should know in the database system space.

Running The Bases

By 2025 the total amount of digital data generated, gathered, copied and consumed is expected to exceed 180 zettabytes. That’s the kind of statistic that gives CIOs, database administrators and other IT executives nightmares.

To make productive use of the ever-growing volumes of data, businesses and organizations need the right database technology to manage all that data and make it available for transactional and analytical applications.

Not surprisingly, the database market is one of the largest and fastest-growing markets in all of software and is forecast to reach $123.4 billion in 2026, according to IDC.

As part of the CRN 2023 Big Data 100, we’ve put together the following list of database system companies—from well-established vendors to those in startup mode—that solution providers should be familiar with.

These vendors offer next-generation relational database systems that can handle growing volumes of data and transactions, analytical databases designed to process complex queries against huge data sets, and more specialized systems such as graph databases and time series databases.

This week CRN is running the Big Data 100 list in a series of slide shows, organized by technology category, spotlighting vendors of business analytics software, database systems, data warehouse and data lake systems, data management and integration software, data observability tools, and big data systems and cloud platforms.

Some vendors market big data products that span multiple technology categories. They appear in the slideshow for the technology segment in which they are most prominent.

Aerospike

CEO: Subbu Iyer

Aerospike develops the multi-model NoSQL Aerospike database system that the company says delivers predictable performance at scale and can process petabytes of data in real time. Based on a distributed, hybrid memory (flash memory and in-memory) architecture, Aerospike boasts microsecond latency and high availability.

The open-source Aerospike database software is available under the AGPL license.

In November Aerospike, headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., announced the early availability of Aerospike Cloud, a database-as-a-service based on Aerospike database 6 and running on AWS.

Cockroach Labs

CEO: Spencer Kimball

Cockroach Labs develops CockroachDB, a distributed, cloud-native SQL database for developing data-intensive transactional applications. The database’s key attributes are its resilience and elastic scalability, which lead to the company’s tagline (and the company’s name): “Scale fast. Survive disaster. Thrive everywhere.”

Cockroach Labs was founded by former Google engineers in 2015 and is based in New York City.

CockroachDB is available for businesses and organizations to run “self-hosted” on-premises or in the cloud. Cockroach Labs also offers the database in two managed service options: CockroachDB Dedicated and CockroachDB Serverless. The company recently released CockroachDB 22.2.

Couchbase

President and CEO: Matt Cain

Couchbase Server is a distributed, multi-model NoSQL database that falls in the category of JSON document-oriented databases that are ideal for storing semi-structured data.

The Couchbase database is developed by Santa Clara, Calif.-based Couchbase and is available under the opens-source Apache License 2.0. Couchbase also offers the software in multiple commercial configurations including the cloud-based Capella Couchbase-as-a-service.

In March Couchbase expanded its ISV Partner Program, offering independent software developers a new Success Package of enhanced training, certifications and additional resources to build and market their Couchbase applications.

DataStax

CEO: Chet Kapoor

DataStax Enterprise is a massively scalable, cloud-native NoSQL database, based on the open-source Apache Cassandra database and marketed by Santa Clara, Calif.-based DataStax.

DataStax also operates the serverless Astra DB cloud database-as-a-service, also based on Cassandra, and the Astra Streaming messaging and event streaming service built on Apache Pulsar.

DataStax raised $115 million in a private equity round led by Goldman Sachs in June 2022. In January of this year DataStax acquired machine learning company Kaskada to facilitate the development of real-time AI applications.

EDB

President and CEO: Ed Boyajian

EDB provides commercial software and services around the popular Postgres open-source database. The company also develops Oracle compatibility and migration software.

In February EDB launched EDB Postgres Distributed 5.0 with advanced operational resiliency, scalability and disaster recovery capabilities. The company also announced the availability of Transparent Data Encryption, software that extends Postgres with enterprise-grade security and performance capabilities.

The open-source Postgres relational database itself is a successor to the Ingres database originally developed in the 1990s at the University of California, Berkeley.

EdgeDB

CEO: Yuri Selivanov

Startup EdgeDB develops a next-generation graph-relational database that the company says is designed as “the spiritual successor” to the SQL and relational paradigm.

At its core EdgeDB is a relational database with an object-oriented data model, a strict graph schema and a modern query language. The database is designed to address some of the ergonomic limitations that developers face with traditional SQL and relational schema modeling.

EdgeDB, headquartered in San Francisco, was founded in 2019 and raised $15 billion in Series A funding in November 2022.

Exasol

CEO: Joerg Tewes

Exasol develops its namesake in-memory, column-oriented, relational database system that’s designed for high-performance data analysis tasks.

Last year the company unveiled new capabilities for its analytics software-as-a-service database that runs on AWS, including a native interface with the Keboola cloud-based data stack as-a-service for building ETL/ELT and other data pipelines and workflows.

Exasol is headquartered in Nuremberg, Germany, with offices in several locations the U.S. and Europe. In November the company named Joerg Tewes as CEO:, succeeding Aaron Auld who stepped down from the post.

Imply

CEO: Fangjin Yang

Imply was founded by the original developers of Apache Druid, an open-source, high-performance, real-time analytics database that delivers sub-second queries on batch and streaming data.

Imply offers its Druid-based Imply Enterprise database and Imply Polaris database-as-a-service, along with other tools and services, for developing modern analytical applications.

The Burlingame, Calif.-based company raised $100 million in a Series D funding round in May of last year.

InfluxData

CEO: Evan Kaplan

InfluxData develops InfluxDB, a high-speed time-series database for storing and managing time series data in such areas as operations monitoring, application metrics, IoT sensor data and real-time analytics.

The company just introduced InfluxDB 3.0 with better data ingest performance, improved storage compression and faster queries against high-cardinality data.

Headquartered in San Francisco, InfluxData raised $81 million in capital in March, including a $51 million Series E funding round.

Kinetica

CEO: Nima Negahban

Kinetica markets a real-time, vectorized database for analyzing and observing time-series and spatial data – everything from sensor readings and machine data to market prices, video footage, radar and GPS system data, and more.

The Kinetica database itself is Postgres compatible, supports SQL queries, and offers native integration with Apache Kafka and API Key integration with Confluent’s data-in-motion platform. The database works with popular business intelligence tools like Tableau, Spotfire and Microsoft PowerBI.

Kinetica began offering its database as a service on AWS last September.

MariaDB

CEO: Michael Howard

The popular MariaDB relational database is an open-source, commercially supported fork of the open-source MySQL database.

The MariaDB company was founded in 2010 by CTO Michael “Monty” Widenius, one of the original MySQL developers, after database giant Oracle acquired MySQL (as part of its 2009 purchase of Sun Microsystems) and Widenius was concerned about Oracle’s stewardship of MySQL.

Today MariaDB, headquartered in Redwood City, Calif., offers a free community edition of the database and a commercial enterprise edition. MariaDB also provides SkySQL, a fully-managed database-as -a-service built on the database, and the MariaDB Xpand distributed SQL database for applications that require high availability and scalability.

The MariaDB database is also available from the MariaDB Foundation under the open-source GNU General Public License.

MongoDB

President and CEO: Dev Ittycheria

MongoDB is one of the leading next-generation NoSQL database providers with its cross-platform, document-oriented MongoDB database. With its flexible schema architecture, the database is popular with developers building distributed, high-availability/high-scalability applications using agile methodologies.

In addition to community and enterprise editions of its database, MongoDB offers its MongoDB Atlas multi-cloud database, data services and development platform.

MongoDB Atlas has gained traction in the marketplace, thanks in part to strategic alliances the company struck with Amazon Web Services in early 2022 and Microsoft Azure in October.

Publicly held MongoDB reported revenue of $1.28 billion for its fiscal 2023 (ended Jan. 31), up 47 percent year over year.

Neo4j

CEO: Emil Eifrem

Neo4j develops its namesake Neo4j graph database and the Neo4j AuraDB fully managed database-as-a-service. The company also markets a data science and modeling platform that works with the database system.

Graph databases are a type of NoSQL database that are particularly effective for uncovering connections and relationships across diverse data. Neo4j announced the general availability of Neo4j 5 in November.

Earlier this month Neo4j, based in San Mateo, Calif., hired Google executive Sudhir Hasbe as the company’s new chief product officer.

Neo4j raised $325 million in a very impressive Series F funding round in June 2021.

Redis Labs

CEO: Rowan Trollope

Redis Labs leads the development of the popular in-memory, multi-model Redis database. While originally designed as a caching database Redis today is frequently used as a primary database, positioned as an alternative to traditional relational databases. The open-source Redis database is known for its devoted community of users and developers.

The Redis database boasts sub-second latency, data persistence, replication for high-availability and clustering for horizontal scalability. It is frequently used for real-time data store, caching and session storage, and streaming and messaging tasks. Common use cases include document storage, telemetry, identity and resource management, and fraud detection.

In January, Mountain View, Calif.-based Redis Labs, which markets commercial enterprise and cloud editions of the database, launched an enhanced global partner program for its channel ecosystem of system integrators, VARs, consulting firms and distributors. The revamped program offered new and upgraded financial compensation plans, technical support and marketing resources.

ScyllaDB

CEO: Dor Laor

ScyllaDB is the company behind the distributed NoSQL database of the same name that’s designed to be extremely fast and highly scalable when working with huge volumes of data.

The open-source database is designed for data-intensive applications that require high throughput and low latency. It is positioned as an alternative to the Apache Cassandra and AWS DynamoDB databases.

ScyllaDB, headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., offers commercial enterprise and cloud editions of the database while the open-source version is available under the GNU AGPL license.

SingleStore

CEO: Raj Verma

SingleStore says its SingleStoreDB relational SQL database unifies transaction processing and analytics in a single database engine, making it effective for operational analytics and AI/machine learning-powered applications that require fast data ingestion.

SingleStoreDB is a proprietary, distributed, cloud-native database that the San Francisco-based company says can power data-intensive applications that require high-speed transaction and query processing.

In February SingleStore struck an exclusive partnership and reseller agreement with Solutions by stc to market SingleStore’s database and related software across the Middle East.

SQream

CEO: Ami Gal

SQream develops the SQreamDB relational database that processes analytical queries against extremely large, complicated data sets. The database runs on GPUs from Nvidia to accelerate its performance.

SQream also offers Panoply, the company’s managed cloud data and ELT platform, based on technology SQream acquired in December 2021.

TigerGraph

CEO: Yu Xu

TigerGraph develops TigerGraph DB, a fast and highly scalable native-parallel graph database targeted toward advanced analytics and machine learning tasks.

TigerGraph offers server and cloud editions of the database. The company also provides the TigerGraph Insights visual analytics tool and a machine learning workbench.

In March TigerGraph released the latest edition (3.9) of the database – both the core database engine and the TigerGraph Cloud database-as-a-service – providing new security and advanced AI and machine learning capabilities, enhanced data ingestion and expanded Kubernetes functionality, and improved DevOps support.

Headquartered in Redwood City, Calif., TigerGraph recently reported that both its global customer base and cloud database revenue doubled in 2022.

Timescale

CEO: Ajay Kulkarni

Timescale develops TimescaleDB, a high-performance database for processing and analyzing time series data.

The database is built on the open-source PostgreSQL relational database. Timescale Cloud, which launched on October 2021, is the company’s database-as-a-service offering.

Timescale is headquartered in New York and raised $110 million in Series C funding in early 2022.

Yugabyte

CEO: Bill Cook

Yugabyte develops YugabyteDB, a high-performance, transactional, distributed SQL database that’s designed for cloud-native applications. YugabyteDB is compatible with the PostgreSQL database.

The Yugabyte database is available in multiple editions including the core database, the YugabyteDB Anywhere self-managed database-as-a-service, and the YugabyteDB Managed fully-managed cloud database. In January the company launched YugabyteDB Voyager, a database migration platform.

Yugabyte, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., raised $188 million in Series C funding in September 2021.