William Blair & Company initiated research coverage of MongoDB, Inc. (MDB $143.73), which provides a modern, general-purpose database platform for enterprises around the world. In conjunction with the initiation, analyst Jason Ader published a comprehensive industry report on the database software market.
"MongoDB has clearly established critical mass with best-of-breed technology and execution, and has separated itself from the crowded field of upstart database vendors," Ader said. "After having seen little innovation since the 1970s, the $30 billion operational database market has been upended by a bevy of new vendors and technologies, led by MongoDB. The main drivers of disruption, in our view, have been cloud computing and open-source software—which together have revolutionized how applications are built, where they are located, and how they interact with their underlying data."
"If data is the fuel of the digital economy, the database is a critical part of the engine," Ader said, "allowing users to create, modify, retrieve, query, and ultimately organize the data tied to an application. Underneath every application lives a database, which explains the strategic value and historical stickiness of this market. To keep pace with the surging volume of data and changing nature of applications, the database itself has undergone a transformation.
This has fueled the emergence of a plethora of database types and vendors over the past several years geared toward specific use-cases. However, the different places data can be stored and different ways data can be stored have led to hype and market confusion, though the dust appears to be settling as customers learn which products/vendors work best for different use-cases."
Ader continued, "MongoDB has established itself as a leader in nonrelational databases, which have seen rapid adoption alongside the boom in unstructured data creation and next-generation, cloud-native applications that demand the speed, flexibility, and scalability inherent in a nonrelational database. At the same time, MongoDB has worked hard to extend its core document database technology to new use-cases that it previously was not able to address, including transaction-oriented applications historically associated with relational databases. And as developers have gained increasing influence in vendor selection, MongoDB's developer-centric, open-source strategy has proved wise. MongoDB's Community Server software has been downloaded over 60 million times, while the 2018 Stack Overflow developer survey ranks MongoDB as the 'most wanted' database among the roughly 100,000 respondents. We expect strong top-line growth to be sustained for the next several years as MongoDB adds new customers and expands penetration into its existing accounts."
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