Can graph databases fulfill the hype? We won’t know for sure until AWS’ Neptune arrives at year-end
Graph technology has been the next big thing in the enterprise database market for longer than I can remember. It certainly doesn’t lack for dogged evangelists who tout graph as the silver bullet for practically every advanced computing application.
So why hasn’t graph technology broken into the enterprise mainstream? Many major data platform vendors now offer graph-based solutions. But you’d be forgiven if you can’t remember who offers commercially available graph databases, what those solutions are called, or how they differentiate from the competition. Some big-data companies, such as Cloudera Inc., have gone out of their way to state that they have no plans to offer their own graph database, but will gladly refer you to partners who do.
Graph technology has been amply “validated” by major solution providers, but that somehow has failed to build enthusiasm for the technology beyond a stable core of aficionados. Among the public cloud vendors, the most recent entrant into the graph market was Amazon Web Services Inc. Last December at its annual re:Invent conference, AWS announced Neptune, a graph database-as-a-service that incorporates intellectual property gained with the prior acquihire of Blazegraph. Here’s AWS Chief Executive Andy Jassy at re:Invent 2017 (pictured) discussing Neptune and graph technology in its larger cloud computing roadmap:
Having attended that event and gained a deep dive on Neptune, I assumed that it was then on the verge of general availability. That was a plausible assumption, given how both IBM and Microsoft in the preceding year had both announced cloud databases that leverage open-source code and support graph data models.
So I was mildly surprised to read this recent ZDNet column and learn Neptune has only now gone into public preview and likely won’t be available in the AWS cloud until the end of this year. And the market has seemingly shrugged off that delay, as if the entry of the largest public cloud provider into this niche technology is no big deal.
Near as I can tell, AWS remains fully committed to adding Neptune to its bulging portfolio of high-performance cloud data platforms, though it hasn’t done much to evangelize the technology’s applications.
