Apple has bought a boring database company you’ve never heard of called FoundationDB. While not as sexy as buying Beats, the acquisition is good news for Apple’s increasingly important cloud services.
The Virginia-based startup, which has raised a little over $20 million in funding, specializes in handling large chunks of data very quickly. TechCrunch first reported news of the acquisition.
Apple could definitely use help on the server side, especially after its cloud services just recently suffered the worst outage in their history. With the iTunes Store, App Store, iCloud, iMessage, Siri, and a forthcoming TV service, Apple needs all the data power it can get. Hopefully FoundationDB will help.
Alex Heath is a journalist who works for Tech Insider. He’s the former co-host of The CultCast. He has been quoted by the likes of the BBC, KRON 4 News, and books like “ICONIC: A Photographic Tribute to Apple Innovation.” He lives in Lexington, Kentucky. If you want to pitch a story, share a tip, or just get in touch, additional contact information is available on his personal site. Follow him on Twitter.
5 responses to “Apple buys boring database company you’ve never heard of”
I Hope so!
Alex, what in the hell kind of writeup is this supposed to be? FoundationDB is fairly well-known among web developers, but even if it’s relatively unknown in general, what is the point of calling it “boring” and something “you’ve never heard of”? It seems extremely unprofessional, coming from a supposed tech journalist.
“Apple has bought a boring database company you’ve never heard of called FoundationDB.”. Why is it boring? Because you can’t see the potential? It’s a well known database for a lot of developers, or aren’t they supposed to read this? Incredibly unprofessional. I guess “I don’t know or understand this” equals “boring”
“FoundationDB is called ‘boring’ by one of those irrelevant tech journalists”.
How does that feel?
It’s certainly not boring in our office at the moment where the core component that powers a few of our projects has disappeared without trace. In the DevOps world, FoundationDB is/was a really exciting bit of tech.