Follow Datanami:
November 6, 2019

Neo4j Introduces Neo4J Aura, a Graph Database in the Cloud

SAN MATEO, Calif., Nov. 6, 2019 – Neo4j, the leader in graph databases, today announced Neo4j Aura, the first fully-managed native graph database as a service.

Unlike other graph and traditional relational databases, Neo4j is built from the ground up to leverage the value of connections in data. Thus, it delivers unparalleled query performance across large, complex datasets.

Neo4j Aura lets users take advantage of the most popular graph database via a frictionless service in the cloud. Neo4j Aura is the ideal database as a service for understanding how people, processes, locations and systems are interrelated.

Neo4j Aura is designed to serve the needs of small and medium businesses, departmental projects and individual developers. Data practitioners focus on building their rich graph-powered applications, leaving the day-to-day management of their database to the same engineers who built the world’s leading graph database. 

Emil Eifrem, CEO and Co-Founder of Neo4j, explained how Neo4j Aura broadens the appeal of the company’s game-changing contribution to enterprise data architecture.

“Neo4j was founded with a mission to help the world make sense of data,” Eifrem said. “The obvious next step in advancing that mission is Neo4j Aura.

“We wanted to address the practical concerns of individual developers and small to mid-size businesses, making graph technology accessible to all. Instead of worrying about operating a database, practitioners can focus on innovating. We’ve just made it simple for anybody to get started with a graph database.”

Minka CTO Tomislav Biscan spoke about how his team along with the ACH Colombia team have been modernizing Colombia’s ACH (automatic clearing house) payments system. Minka uses Neo4j Aura to store transaction data for Transferencias Ya, the country’s state-of-the-art payment system. Transferencias Ya currently handles the real-time payments for eight of Colombia’s banks with plans to onboard all 27 banks to handle 300 transactions per second.

“Neo4j Aura is part of the robust transaction processing system that underpins Transferencias Ya, used to store transaction records and references to maximize efficiency and ensure funds transfers happen in real time,” said Biscan. “Because Neo4j Aura is fully managed, it takes care of day-to-day operations of running a graph database such as backups and cluster management. The fact that Aura assures data durability with guaranteed ACID transactions is of paramount importance for building trust among Transferencias Ya users.”

Stephen O’Grady, Principal Analyst with RedMonk shared his observations on the broader market.

“With the appetite for managed database services dramatically accelerating in today’s market, expectations are high. Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) offerings need to be easy for developers and other practitioners to use, while providing the scalability, performance and security that is required by enterprise adopters,” said O’Grady. “In spite of the fact that Aura is Neo4j’s first entry into the DBaaS space, it’s built to deliver all of the above.”

Mike Morley, Founder of Menome explained Neo4j Aura is being used to enhance Menome Insight, their leading data analysis solution for the environmental engineering, M&A, and legal markets.  For a typical client, Menome Insight brings together highly distributed data assets from corporate data archives, real-time reports, field analysis, legal proceedings and even news articles into a single knowledge graph which summarizes millions of records, helping analysts and data scientists better understand their businesses and support more accurate decision-making.

“Neo4j Aura lets us deliver Menome Insight as a cloud-based managed service,” said Morley. “Now our clients gain the power of scalable, graph-based analyses to understand their large, highly distributed data sets – without enduring the complexities of on-premises hosting. Neo4j Aura delivers many essential features: we are able to scale up and down instantly, we always know where we stand financially via its clear and simple pricing model, the graph data is automatically backed up, the system is always on, and data integrity is guaranteed. These are mission critical – for both Menome and our customers.”

More about Neo4j Aura

Neo4j Aura enables developers, architects and data scientists to deploy, scale and power connected data applications in the cloud. The practitioner is relieved of tedious operations to focus on developing modern, efficient applications that leverage connected data insights for uses like customer 360, fraud detection and machine learning.

Neo4j Aura is flexible, reliable and developer friendly. Key features include:

  • Zero administration: Never worry about servers again. With easy provisioning and one-click deployment, Neo4j Aura significantly accelerates the development and deployment of intelligent applications in the cloud.

  • Simple pricing:  Pay only for what is needed with capacity-based pricing that’s simple and easy to understand. With flat hourly rates by capacity, costs are predictable and transparent.

  • “Always-on” availability: Neo4j Aura is not only fault-tolerant and self-healing but also designed from the ground-up for high availability. Neo4j Aura manages complex processes such as tuning, security patches, software updates and configuration changes with absolutely zero downtime.

  • On-demand scaling: Easily scale up or down as your needs change. Neo4j Aura automatically resizes the database without disrupting your workflow.

  • Guaranteed data durability: ACID transactions maintain data consistency. Neo4j Aura replicates data across three separate physical disks to ensure data durability. In addition, data is backed up daily with a seven-day retention policy.

  • Highly secure: Neo4j Aura offers built-in authentication and end-to-end data encryption. It supports multiple database users with password authentication over TLS-encrypted connections. All database data and backups are encrypted at rest.

  • Easy data loading: Whether you’re migrating an existing Neo4j database or importing from a non-Neo4j data source, data import is easy by using a simple command-line tool or CSV as a transfer format.

About Neo4j

Neo4j is the leading graph database platform that drives innovation and competitive advantage at Airbus, Comcast, eBay, NASA, UBS, Walmart and more. Thousands of community deployments and more than 300 customers harness connected data with Neo4j to reveal how people, processes, locations and systems are interrelated. Using this relationships-first approach, applications built using Neo4j tackle connected data challenges including artificial intelligence, fraud detection, real-time recommendations and master data. Find out more at neo4j.com.


Source: Neo4j

Datanami