VMware's not alone in it, though. Oracle with Coherence, IBM with WebSphere eXtreme Scale, Software AG and others compete in the market. The predominant IMDG tool, though, Pezzini says, is the open source Memcached, which is a bare-bones version that does not provide replication of data across a computer network or transaction management capabilities.
That's where companies like VMware and others look to step in to offer proprietary versions of IMDG tools that provide a simpler interface, administrative tools and monitoring services. Those are two of the biggest areas VMware has improved upon in the 7.0 release of GemFire, Pezzini says. The simplified administration "is important because monitoring, management and administration are nightmares in large scale IMDG deployments."
The 7.0 release also provides improved support for replication over wide-area network, Pezzini says. "This is critical for disaster recovery across multiple data centers, synchronization between on-premises and cloud and to support around-the-clock, around-the-world operations," he notes. VMware also added further support for JSON and Spring, which are used widely in mobile app development communities. And perhaps most impressive, VMware has scaled up GemFire's capacity. "We really wanted to address requirements of scale," McJannet says, noting that some users question if IMDGs are ideal for large-scale data uses. GemFire 7.0 has been tested with up to 4TB of data in memory, he says.
Network World staff writer Brandon Butler covers cloud computing and social collaboration. He can be reached at BButler@nww.com and found on Twitter at @BButlerNWW.
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