Redis acquires storage engine startup Speedb to enhance its open-source database – SiliconANGLE

Redis Ltd. has acquired Speedb Ltd., the developer of a storage engine it uses to power its commercial database offerings.

The company didn’t disclose the financial terms in its announcement of the deal today. Tel Aviv-based Speedb previously raised $4 million through a funding round that closed in 2021. It announced a partnership with Redis the following year. 

Databases typically keep the information they hold in flash or disk storage. When an application requests a record, it’s fetched through a two-step process: The database loads the record from storage into memory and then makes it available to the workload that requested it.

Redis is a well-funded startup that commercializes a popular open-source database of the same name. Redis stores information in memory rather than flash or disk drives. As a result, the database can skip the step of moving records from storage to memory when they’re requested by applications, which allows it to speed up query response times significantly.

Because of its performance, Redis is widely used as a cache. Applications keep their most important files in the platform to ensure they can be retrieved quickly when users require them. It also lends itself to other latency-sensitive use cases such as stream processing, or the task of analyzing data immediately after it’s generated.

The open-source version of the database has millions of users. Redis commercializes it with two paid editions, Redis Enterprise and Redis Cloud, that include additional features not available in the free release. One of those features is a tool called Auto Tiering that is powered by technology from Speedb, the startup the company acquired today.

The fact that Redis keeps data in memory rather than storage helps improve performance, but also increases costs because DRAM is more expensive than either flash or disk. The Speedb-powered Auto Tiering tool that ships with the database’s paid versions allows companies to move some of their data from DRAM to flash. According to Redis, the feature can help customers reduce their infrastructure costs by up to 70%.

Speedb provides an open-source storage engine of the same name. A storage engine is a software component that databases such as Redis use to manage the process of creating, editing, reading and deleting records. Redis’ implementation of Speedb can perform up to 10,000 data operations per second using each processor core assigned to a database.

The companies’ respective platforms share several common features. They both keep information in a key-value format, which means each record is stored together with a unique identifier called a key that makes it easier to find. Additionally, Speedb is geared toward many of the same use cases as Redis, including caching and stream processing.

“Acquiring Speedb takes Redis beyond RAM,” said Redis Chief Executive Officer Rowan Trollope. “This is a new chapter for Redis, and we’re looking forward to working with our customers and partners to bring the unmatched speed we’re known for to more of their applications and experiences.”

Redis plans to expand its use of Speedb following the deal. In particular, the company will incorporate the storage engine into the open-source version of its database later this  year. The update is set to roll out alongside several other major changes to the platform. 

The standard open-source version of Redis is available alongside another free edition, Redis Stack, that includes additional features for tasks such as artificial intelligence inference. The company on Wednesday announced plans to merge the two platforms into a single open-source project. It’s set to be distributed under new licensing terms that will require cloud providers to pay for the database if they wish to sell it commercially. 

Image: Redis