MongoDB in 2013 -- A Year in Review

It's again that time of the year. Analysts are spending oceans of words to predict the future, companies are making plans for the next year and people are resting and enjoying the break with their families. To me, this is the perfect time to reflect on my choices, the direction I'm headed to and consider if I still love what I do.

At the beginning of the year I decided to join MongoDB (formerly 10gen). The more I think about it, the more I realize I've been wrong. Yes, it's been the worst decision in my life not to join MongoDB when I was first offered the opportunity years ago. At that time an insightful friend asked me to consider the opportunity. At that time I didn't see what I see today.

I didn't see the database world changing so quickly. I didn't see lots of new applications being built on MongoDB and an ecosystem growing around the product. I couldn't glimpse the future of it becoming the leading NoSQL database. I couldn't understand the opportunity for Document Databases and for JSON emerging as a new standard for developers... or maybe I just preferred stability over challenge.

Time has passed since then and now I'm here. How was 2013 at MongoDB? Just amazing. As a good scribe I want to capture the key developments in the MongoDB world in a single page. This is an exercise that I'm doing since years and it gives an idea of the pace of growth, how well we communicate and the level of engagement of the ecosystem.

Company

• MongoDB Extends Its Lead As The Industry's "Best NoSQL Database"
• MongoDB Closes $150 Millions in Funding
• MongoDB is the Fastest-Growing Community in Big Data
• First Ever MongoDB World 2014 Announced
• 10gen Announces Company Name Change to MongoDB, Inc.
• MongoDB Establishes Financial Services Advisory Group
• MongoDB CEO Visits Dublin to Open New EMEA Headquarters
• MongoDB Moves to Former New York Times Building
• 10gen Recognized as a 2013 Computerworld Honors Laureate
• 10gen Hires Former TIBCO CFO Sydney Carey
• Philip Carty to Lead Global Sales at 10gen
• 10gen Promotes Max Schireson to CEO

Products

• MongoDB Certification now available for Developers and DBAs
• Private, On-Demand Training for MongoDB Now Available
• Integration of Hadoop and MongoDB, Big Data’s Two Most Popular Technologies, Gets Significant Upgrade
• MongoDB Backup Service Announced
• 10gen Releases MongoDB 2.4

Clients

• Forbes Succeeds with MongoDB
• Trend Micro Aims for 24/7 Uptime With MongoDB
• Seven Bridges Genomics Relies on MongoDB for Next-Generation Sequencing Analysis
• EnerNOC Unlocks Insights for Electrical Grid with MongoDB
• Novawise Chooses MongoDB to Power Flexible Pharmaceutical App
• MongoDB to Power UK Met Office Space Weather Predictions
• Comparethemarket.com Selects MongoDB to Improve User Experience
• MetLife Leapfrogs Insurance Industry with MongoDB-Powered Big Data Application
• ServiceSource Scales to Manage $8 Billion in Recurring Revenue with MongoDB
• CARFAX® Selects MongoDB to Power 11 Billion Record Database

Partners

• Pentaho Announces New Offering for MongoDB-based Business Intelligence
• MongoDB and Red Hat Deliver Integrated Security Solution for MongoDB
• IBM and MongoDB Collaborate to Bring Mobile to the Enterprise
• Informatica and MongoDB Partner to Expand Data Integration for MongoDB
• 10gen Launches Partner Program

I want to say thank you to all partners, customers, colleagues and users who made this journey a great one. I'm looking forward to working with all of you even more in the years to come. PKPFZ79ENW4D

Web Based Seminars (aka Webinars), why not?

On Thursday the 8th, we delivered the most successful italian MySQL webinar ever. We had about 350 registrations, thanks for your support and constant participation!
We also awarded a wonderful MySQL t-shirt to the one who first answered correctly to a trivia question, congratulations to the winner.

Looking into the story of italian webinars, here is the ranking in terms of registrations:

1. Getting Started with MySQL on Windows
2. Scalable MySQL High Availability Architectures
3. A guide to Scaling MySQL
4. MySQL Performance Tuning - Top 5 Tips
5. Introducing MySQL 5.0

If you were unable to participate you can click here and listen to the on-demand versions. Others noteworthy webinars are the one that we delivered with our partners:

• Pentaho
• Infobright and Talend

In conclusion, what I've learned from this fulfilling experience?
Delivering web based seminars (webinars for short) is a great way to stay in touch with customers and to address specific topics. This powerful tool can be used to update on product directions, sales offers, technical topics and present joint partner solutions. The audience can sit in the comfort of their home or office and receive a quick update without spending too much time or money.
If you are a Sales Engineer, Sales Manager, Marketing Manager, Product Manager or if you simply want to stay virtually in touch with your users, this is a delivery method worth of consideration.

Do you have advices on a topic that you wish to hear in the upcoming italian MySQL webinars? Please comment this post and we'll examine your ideas.