Apple’s latest acquisition is a small 40-person company called FoundationDB, which specialises in noSQL databases, a popular platform for web applications.
Apple is noted for its acquisitions strategy that involves acquiring little-known but specialised and focused start-ups that ultimately feed into an over-arching vision. In many cases the acquisition is often about hiring people as well as the technology, in this case indicating Apple has industrial scale plans for the cloud and myriads of data.
FoundationDB provides noSQL database technology as a cloud service. NoSQL takes all forms of unstructured data and makes sense of it for web applications.
The Virginia-based company is understood to have raised up to US$23m in funding from SV Angel, Sutter Hill and Crunchfund, the venture firm established by TechCrunch founding editor Michael Arrington.
The Apple cloud
The company claims that its cloud cluster is capable of achieving 54bn writes for three nano-dollars or 3.6m database writes a cent.
The company’s website simply states: “Thank you for your support of FoundationDB over the last five years. We’re grateful to have shared our vision of building the best database software and we strongly value your participation in this community. We have made the decision to evolve our company mission and, as of today, we will no longer offer downloads.”
In related news it emerged last month that Apple is to invest €1.7bn to build and operate two data centres in Europe that will be 100pc powered by renewable energy. One will be located in Athenry on Ireland’s west coast and the other in Denmark’s central Jutland.
Both data centres will power Apple’s online services including the iTunes Store, the App Store, iMessage, Maps and Siri for customers across Europe.
The new €850m Athenry data centre will be the company’s largest data centre project in Europe, providing 300 jobs during its multiple phases.
Data centre image via Shutterstock
