Story by
Paul Sawers
Paul Sawers was a reporter with The Next Web in various roles from May 2011 to November 2014. Follow Paul on Twitter: @psawers or check h Paul Sawers was a reporter with The Next Web in various roles from May 2011 to November 2014. Follow Paul on Twitter: @psawers or check him out on Google+.
Just two weeks after Samsung Ventures made a strategic investment in mobile security firm Fixmo for an undisclosed sum, Samsung Ventures has added yet another investment to its growing portfolio.
Cloudant is a Boston-based software company, providing distributed database-as-a-service (DBaaS) solutions to enterprises. Samsung’s latest strategic investment will be used for R&D purposes to develop “global data distribution technologies and mobile application data management.”
While Software as a Service (SaaS) has become something of a buzzword in tech circles in recent years, given it shifts the cost of hardware/software deployment and management to the vendor, DBaaS is like a more specialized field within SaaS — it’s more specific to database software and the associated physical database storage, provided as a service.
Cloudant’s distributed DBaaS offering manages the loading, storing, analysing, and distributing of operational application data for the developers of large Web and mobile apps.
In terms of why Samsung Ventures is looking to support Cloudant, well, the answer lies in the growing focus of data management in a connected world, from mobile devices and the so-called “Internet of Things.”
“Samsung Ventures believes a globally distributed data layer and management of that data is especially critical for large enterprise businesses,” explains Hyuk-Jeen Suh, Senior Investment Manager with Samsung Ventures America. “We felt that this is the right time to strategically invest in Cloudant to support the company’s vision to manage the proliferation of data to be created by, for example, mobile devices, machine-to-machine (M2M) technologies, and the ‘Internet of things’ in the future.”
With both individuals and enterprises generating more and more data via a myriad of mobile, desktop and other connected devices, this requires distributed databases to accommodate the data. For Samsung, its Cloudant investment is about supporting the shift into government agencies, small- to medium-sized businesses and other enterprises – its big business and will only get bigger.
Back in December, Samsung Ventures also invested $5m in Delivery Agent, a TV e-commerce platform, as it looks to capitalize on the proliferation of smart TVs.
Feature Image Credit – Thinkstock
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