Name any enterprise application today, and its a pretty safe bet that its deployed on a relational database management system. Since the 1980s, RDBMS technology has been the go-to solution for storing and retrieving information about almost anything, from finances to widgets to people. Oracle (ORCL), IBM (IBM), and Microsoft (MSFT) are among the companies leading the way; SAP and Teradata (TDC) are also competitors.可以认同的是，如今不管哪款企业级应用于，一定都会中用关系型数据库管理系统（RDBMS）。自从20世纪80年代以来，无论信息类型是关于金融、小插件，还是人员，RDBMS就仍然是存储及完全恢复完全所有类型信息的选用方案。甲骨文公司（Oracle）、IBM公司和微软公司（Microsoft）毫无疑问是业界翘楚，SAP公司和天睿公司（Teradata）也是强大的竞争者。Then big data came along. Newly exploding volumes of data made the limits of existing RDMBSes painfully clear. Buyers now want, and expect, immediate answers to questions that previously may have taken companies minutes, hours, days to answer, said Bruce Cleveland, a general partner with InterWest Partners.随后大数据横空出世。

爆炸式快速增长的海量新的数据使目前RDBMS的局限一目了然，也无非无聊。风投公司InterWest Partners普通合伙人布鲁斯o克利夫兰称之为：“以前企业有可能花上上几分钟、几小时、甚至好几天来问客户的问题，但今天，客户期望立刻立刻就有回应。”In a consumer-facing business, a buyer may want to know, Is it in stock? In a B2B business, the buyer may want to know, What is your best price? And they want to know immediately. With data volumes increasing, companies have had two poor options: Either live with sub-optimal performance or scale up their traditional databases using extremely expensive hardware, Cleveland added.在面向消费者的行业里，客户有可能想要理解“有现货吗？”而在B2B行业里，客户有可能想要告诉“最优惠的价格是多少？”而且他们期望立刻就能取得答案。

回应克利夫兰补足称之为：“随着数据量的激增，企业现在只有两个次优自由选择：要么保持佳的业绩，要么用极为便宜的硬件‘升级’传统数据库。”Thats where Splice Machine comes in. Much the way IBM recently announced a scale out storage offering that allows large companies to scale capabilities without massive investments, so Splice Machine aims to do the same thing for large databases.Splice Machine正是逃跑了这一契机。

就像IBM公司最近宣告要“向外拓展”存储产品，让大公司需要巨额投资也能升级存储能力一样，Splice Machine也射击了大型数据库获取类似于服务。The best of both worlds两全其美的方案An alternative to todays RDBMSes, Splice Machine effectively combines traditional relational database technology with the scale-out capabilities of Hadoop, the de facto standard for big data architecture at Yahoo (YHOO), Facebook (FB), and most other major companies. Whereas Hadoop is best known for its power to perform batch analytics, Splice Machine focuses instead on operational applications and real-time analytics.作为目前RDBMS的替代方案，Splice Machine有效地将传统关系型数据技术与Hadoop向外拓展的能力结合，而后者实质上正是雅虎公司（Yahoo）、Facebook公司及其他大企业大数据架构的标准。尽管Hadoop以继续执行批量分析而闻名，但Splice Machine主攻的毕竟业务应用于和动态分析。

Splice Machine is aiming to turn the common wisdom on its head with a solution that combines the best of both worlds: The cost-effective, scale-out performance of Hadoop and compatibility with common RDBMS/SQL processes -- such as data cleansing, customer roll-ups and ETL work -- and applications like Cognos, Unica, SAS and SPSS, Charles King, a principal analyst withPund-IT, said.咨询公司Pund-IT首席分析师查尔斯o金称：“Splice Machine的目标是政治宣传传统观念，获取一种充份融合两大领域优势的解决方案，也就是：Hadoop的经济实惠、向外拓展的性能，及其与标准化RDBMS/SQL操作者——如数据清扫、客户下卷和萃取切换读取（ETL）——以及像Cognos, Unica, SAS和SPSS这类应用于的较好兼容性。”Splice Machines aim is to convince businesses to replace traditional databases such as MySQL and Oracle with their own, Cleveland said, with promises of high performance, accuracy, and reliability.克利夫兰回应，Splice Machine的目标是，凭借高效能、精确性和可靠性等允诺，劝说企业客户用他们的产品更换丢弃MySQL和Oracle这类传统数据库。[Businesses] get high performance from scaling out onto clusters of inexpensive servers, he said. And because Splice Machine supports native SQL, companies can do this without having to rewrite their applications.他说道：“（企业）可以通过将数据向外扩展到比较廉价的服务器集群中取得高效能。

同时，由于Splice Machine反对原生结构化查询语言（SQL），企业可以须改写应用于就能构建这一点。”Scalability nobody has been addressing“前所未有的可扩展性”Last week, Splice Machine -- which was founded two years ago and is backed by $19 million in funding from InterWest Partners and Mohr Davidow Ventures -- launched its Hadoop-based database into public beta. Fifteen companies already use the technology, including the San Antonio, Texas-based marketing services company Harte Hanks. Splice Machine said Harte Hanks observed improvement to the ratio of price to performance by more than 10x compared with its existing Oracle RAC databases. (Splice Machine offers the standalone version of its database on a freemium basis for testing; otherwise, its $5,000 per node.)Splice Machine创办于两年前，取得了来自InterWest和Mohr Davidow Ventures两家公司总计1900万美元的投资。

上周，Splice Machine公布了基于Hadoop的公测版数据库。有数15家公司使用了这项技术，还包括德克萨斯州圣安东尼奥的营销服务公司Harte Hanks。

Splice Machine称之为，Harte Hanks找到与其现有的Oracle RAC数据库比起，系统的性价比提升了十倍多（Splice Machine获取的用作测试的标准版数据库免费；否则每个节点收费5,000美元）。We think this will disrupt the $21 billion database market, Monte Zweben, Splice Machines co-founder and chief executive, told Fortune. (Gartner estimates the market to be worth $26 billion and growing at nine percent annually.)Splice Machine牵头创始人兼任首席执行官蒙特o兹魏本告诉他《财富》杂志（Fortune）：“我们指出这款产品将政治宣传价值210亿美元的数据库市场。”【低德纳公司（Gartner）则估算该市场价值为260亿美元，年增长率为9%】。Previously, Zweben worked at the NASA Ames Research Center; he also founded Blue Martini Software.兹魏本先前效力于美国宇航局艾姆斯研究中心（NASA Ames Research Center），此前还创办过“蓝色马提尼软件公司”（Blue Martini Software）。

The majority of competitors that are trying to apply this scale-out technology are focused on analytical apps, Zweben said. What we think may be more valuable is powering real-time apps, where a concurrent set of users are reading and writing to the database at the same time. Thats scalability nobody has been addressing, and thats what we do.兹魏本称之为：“大多数想应用于这种向外拓展技术的竞争对手都专心于分析应用于。而我们指出更加有价值的有可能是反对动态应用于，也就是同时在线的一组用户在刚好加载、载入数据库。

这是无人曾投身于过的可扩展性，也正是我们现在的主攻方向。”A category-disruptive company“一家政治宣传业界的公司”In many ways, Splice Machine democratizes what huge companies with 50 Ph.Ds and countless Java programmers can do, said Bill Ericson, a general partner at Mohr Davidow, which participated in the companys Series A and Series B financing rounds.Mohr Davidow公司普通合伙人比尔o埃里克森称之为，Splice Machine在很多方面让那些“享有50个博士和无数Java程序员”的大公司足以做到的事普及化了。

这家公司参予了对Splice Machine的A轮及B轮投资。One of the problems with these data-intensive technologies is, they work great if you have really smart Ph.Ds but the average enterprise has limited resources, Ericson said. With Splice Machine, the costs are probably 10 to 25 percent of trying to do this with something like Oracle. Users dont have to buy all new software and all new tools, and not only do they save on the fundamental infrastructure, but they dont have to throw out the window everything they built over the last 25 years.他说道：“现有这些数据密集型技术的一个问题是，如果企业享有聪明绝顶的博士，这些技术就能大显神通，但一般企业的资源很受限，”而用于Splice Machine的产品后，“成本只有用Oracle这类产品的10%到25%。用户没有适当出售所有的新软件和新的工具。他们不仅能省下大笔的基础设施支出，而且不用舍弃过去25年来辛辛苦苦打造出的一切。

”Splice Machines model dramatically changes the economics of scaling databases, Cleveland said. One of Splice Machines customers had their queries speed up by three to seven times while reducing costs by over 75% compared to their current database solution.克利夫兰称之为，Splice Machine的模式“很大地转变了数据库拓展的经济性。Splice Machine的一位客户体现，与其目前的数据库解决方案比起，他们现在的查找速度提升了三到七倍，同时成本却减少了75%。”For InterWest Partners -- which participated in Splice Machines Series B -- the company is an example of investing in what we believe could be a category-disruptive company, he added. Since Splice Machine supports standard SQL, it has the potential to replace -- disrupt -- the traditional database suppliers by offering a low-cost, high-performance, scale-out database solution without companies having to rewrite their existing applications, which is what the NoSQL and NewSQL companies require in order to use their solutions. With Splice Machine, the same programmers who wrote the existing SQL applications can easily and simply use Splice Machine without any specialized skills or training.他更进一步回应，对InterWest Partners公司来说——它参予了Splice Machine的B轮投资——这家公司“正是我们深信将政治宣传业界的典型企业。

因为Splice Machine反对标准SQL，它有潜力通过获取低成本、高效率、向外拓展的数据库解决方案替换（或者说政治宣传）传统的数据库供应商，而需要让企业改写现有应用于。忽略，能用NoSQL和NewSQL公司的解决方案，就必需改写现有应用于。依赖Splice Machine，撰写现有SQL应用于的程序员可以须不具备任何专门技巧或培训就能精彩用于Splice Machine的解决方案。”A potential acquisition target一个潜在的并购对象It remains to be seen whether Splice Machine can deliver on its promises and whether RDBMS vendors have reason to worry, Pund-ITs King said.Pund-IT公司的金回应，关于Splice Machine否能还清允诺，以及RDBMS供应商否不会因此忧心忡忡，这两点还有待仔细观察。

The answer to the first is found in the accolades of the companys 15 pilot customers, he said. Whether established vendors should be worried is harder to say. Any number of alternative vendors have tried to shake up the RDBMS market without much success to show for it.他说道：“从这家公司15家首先试用的客户众口一词的称赞可以找到，它的确没说大话。而传统供应商是不是该深感忧虑就很差说道了。

很多一度想要动摇RDBMS市场的供应商都铩羽而归，乏善可陈。”Still, organizations are searching for ways to save money while supporting necessary business applications and processes, King said. Which means Splice Machine could be the subject of much interest.金回应，很多企业在反对适当的业务应用于和流程的同时，还在设法节约成本。

这就意味著Splice Machine将不会沦为很多公司注目的对象。If it truly can deliver the goods, the company could do very well, King said. [It could] even become an acquisition target by a traditional RDBMS vendor that wishes to capture a bit more big data magic while making life difficult for its competitors.金说：“如果这家公司显然能交付给好的产品，它认同不会蒸蒸日上。它甚至不会沦为传统RDBMS企业的并购目标，因为这些企业既期望取得更加多大数据技术的魔力，同时又让自己输掉的日子不好过。

本文来源：米乐|米乐·M6-www.elenaom.com