Aerospike’s Tale of Innovation and Efficiency in Distributed Databases

Real-time data, distributed databases have become essential for maximizing the efficiency and effectiveness of AI applications. Equipped with capabilities to handle massive volumes of data with low latency, real-time databases are indispensable in supporting AI-driven applications and workflows. In a ‘Volt-Ful’ interview, Aveekshith Bushan, Vice President and GM, Asia Pacific and Japan, Aerospike gets alongside with Niloy sharing the company’s innovation in processing AI/ML tasks on real-time data. His critical vantage on the evolution of distributed databases globally and Aerospike’s innovations like “Hybrid Memory Architecture. Catch up With the Volt Veteran Below.

How to define Aerospike as a company and its working nature and culture?

Aerospike is a modern distributed database built for massive scale, very high speed, and huge savings, distinguished by its four core components: Hybrid Memory Architecture with Persistent Data, Scale Up and Scale Out Architecture, strong consistency with high performance and availability, and geo-distributed transactions.

These elements are foundational to Aerospike’s database and handle the ever-growing demands of new-age applications. The databases deliver the best possible user experience to tens of millions of consumers by using large amounts of data, real-time processing, predictive analytics using AI/ML and more recently, generative AI processing. The core database technology supports various use cases, including key-value, document, and graph applications. After being used in KV and Document use cases, Aerospike started offering Graph Support from last year, and the release of vector database support is impending.

Aerospike’s focus has been on transforming data challenges in an interconnected world into opportunities for innovation and efficiency. The working culture at Aerospike is centered around innovation and practicality.

It fosters a collaborative environment where technological advancements are not just theoretical concepts but practical solutions that ensure the best possible user experience. This forward-thinking approach ensures that Aerospike remains at the forefront of technological progress, enabling businesses to embrace modern data infrastructures effectively.

Importance of processing AI/ML tasks on real-time data?

This modern era of advanced AI and generative AI (GenAI) needs a sophisticated approach to data handling, one that incorporates robust data modeling aspects and is built upon the foundation of real-time data processing and analytics. We are entering the stage of an advanced AI era, which is driving transformation in every industry vertical.

Now, real-time data has become essential for maximizing the efficiency and effectiveness of AI applications. Equipped with capabilities to handle massive volumes of data with low latency, real-time databases are indispensable in supporting AI-driven applications and workflows.

It will give users the confidence to know that the results they’re getting include all relevant, real-time data – delivered in the proper context. This is perfectly exemplified by Vectors. Real-time databases also feed insatiable AI algorithms to ensure maximum flexibility in data representation, to achieve optimal performance, scalability, and cost-efficiency in their AI initiatives.

Incorporating real-time data retrieval into the generative process enhances the quality, relevance, and accuracy of AI-generated content. Integral to both classical AI/ML and GenAI applications, technologies like retrieval augmented generation (RAG) and semantic search leverage real-time data to improve search relevance, enable hyper-personalisation and increase the effectiveness of fraud detection and targeted ad delivery.

How real-time data platform has changed UPI payments systems in India and Aerospike’s role in it?

According to the National Payments Corporation of India, Unified Payments Interface (UPI) hit a whopping milestone with 12.02 billion transactions in December 2023. These numbers reflect the pace in which India is embracing digital payments. To facilitate seamless and secure digital transactions, UPI leverages real-time data analytics in collaboration with banks and payment gateways.

The use of real-time data enables monitoring transactions for fraud detection, optimizes payment processing to ensure swift transactions, and customizes the user experience based on preferences. It also facilitates risk management and regulatory compliance. This multifaceted approach ensures efficiency, security, and a personalized service for users.

Aerospike has been working with a number of players in the larger UPI ecosystem for a number of years now and there are several reasons as to why Aerospike has been very popular in this space.

The need for platforms to handle this level of scale, even when there are sudden spikes in traffic, is fundamental to what Aerospike provides, while ensuring that there is predictability in performance, regardless of scale. Availability is another key aspect of what Aerospike provides, this is critical in a system where people transact in real-time and expect quick turnaround times when a transaction is completed. Also, Aerospike provides extremely high Consistency Guarantees that are fundamental to any database platform in the payment space.

Defining the evolution of distributed databases globally?

Classical databases such as Oracle, Db2, and MySQL were not originally designed for data distribution and scale. They struggled to handle the high read and write rates required for new-age applications as internet usage began to grow in the early 2000s.

Today, businesses require databases that are not just fast but extremely reliable and robust enough to handle data growth rates upwards of 30% per year while not breaking their IT budgets. This led to the emergence of modern distributed databases.

Distributed databases are designed to handle massive amounts of data across multiple servers or data centers. These can seamlessly scale in order to mirror the capabilities of cloud environments without introducing operational complexity.

Their evolution has centered around scalable architectures, real-time data processing, and enhanced security, integrating seamlessly with AI/ML technologies to meet the demands of a data-driven, globally interconnected world. This is where Aerospike has carved out a niche in the crowded database market with a focus on high performance for critical applications.

Additionally, specialized databases like graph and time series databases have evolved, and some databases have become multi-modal, supporting multiple data models in a single architecture. This evolution in globally distributed databases is ongoing and is expected to continue for the next five to ten years. 

Can you tell our readers about Aerospike’s innovations like “Hybrid Memory Architecture.”

Aerospike’s contribution to the evolution of distributed databases, particularly in handling high-performance at scale, is a tale of innovation and efficiency. At the heart of Aerospike’s innovation lies the Hybrid Memory Architecture™, which delivers DRAM-like high performance with SSDs.

This approach leverages flash storage to enable reads at sub-millisecond latencies at very high throughput, making all data stored in flash equally accessible in memory. The Hybrid Memory Architecture combined with Aerospike’s robust distributed design with support for geo-distributed transactions provides a system that keeps data safe and provides high availability along with high performance.

In simpler terms, smaller clusters with fewer nodes now handling the same Herculean workloads. Not only does this reduce the total cost of ownership 5x compared to pure RAM, but it also streamlines power consumption and optimizes data center space usage.

What began as an efficient use of computing resources—processors, memory, network—morphed into something even more significant: sustainability. Usage of Aerospike at Scale has given costumers the ability to deploy more eco-friendly data centers with fewer servers and lower carbon footprint. Aerospike Hybrid Memory Architecture has not only supercharged data access but also revolutionized how organizations manage their data workloads. 

Which key industries are Aerospike currently catering and your strategies for the Indian market?

Over the last few years, there has been an explosion of digital use in India due to the introduction of a unique Digital ID for every Indian and a system for making real-time payments. The scale, speed and user experience of these services have crossed all boundaries of what was thought possible.

The India stack, as it is called, now offers many other rails for on-demand commerce, digital currency, toll collection, insurance, and healthcare among others, and will likely continue to grow as more and more people transact online.

Given India’s digital expansion journey and the real-time, high scale and always-on nature of Aerospike, we’ve had tremendous success in the Telecom, BFSI, Gaming, AdTech and e-commerce sectors, where customers have built highly scalable, real-time solutions powered by Aerospike.

Beyond these industry sectors, public sector needs are continuously evolving, and Aerospike is beginning to work with companies in the public sector space as well. A key focus for us is to sign on strategic partners to help customers adopt Aerospike seamlessly and quickly.

The pivotal role of Aerospike in the growth of digital-native enterprises?

Real-time databases have played a part in the growth of digital-native enterprises in India, with their flexibility, scalability, and agility features that allow these Digital Native Enterprises to be nimble, agile, while providing the best customer experience possible as they scale. Aerospike has been helping a number of Digital Native Enterprises in India for several years on end, as each of these have become unicorns and are continuing to scale.

With AI and GenAI’s transformative aspects that are disrupting and redefining industries, the need to build a solid data architecture is paramount. Here are some of the key aspects of Aerospike that will continue to help these Digital Native Enterprises as they embark on their GenAI adoption. 

1. High Performance and Scalability: Aerospike’s Hybrid Memory Architecture ensures sub-millisecond data access and the ability to handle large volumes of transactions. This is crucial for digital-native enterprises like e-commerce platforms, fintech companies, and social media networks that require real-time processing and instantaneous user interactions.
2. Reduced Cost and Better Efficiency: By enabling smaller clusters with fewer nodes to manage substantial workloads, Aerospike reduces the total cost of ownership. This includes lower hardware costs, reduced power consumption, and optimized data center space, allowing digital-native enterprises to allocate resources more effectively. Its efficient use of computing resources not only enhances performance but also promotes sustainable data center practices, aligning with the growing emphasis on environmental responsibility.
3. Reliability and Uptime: Digital-native enterprises depend on uninterrupted service. Aerospike’s strong consistency with high performance and availability ensures that these businesses can operate smoothly without downtime, providing a seamless experience for end-users.
4. RAG and Vector Use Cases: Aerospike’s ability to handle context specific Vector Data and Embeddings, along with Application Data that can augment LLM models at scale and with extreme performance is another key differentiating aspect. This helps organizations build highly customized and context sensitive use cases ranging from Bioinformatics, Recommendation Engines, Fraud Detection to several others across industry verticals