NoSQL Companies CouchOne And Membase Merge To Form Couchbase

NoSQL companies unite! Membase (formerly NorthScale) and CouchOne have decided to merge to form Couchbase, which will provide a comprehensive family of NoSQL (which focuses on adding horizontal scalability to databases) database products for enterprise companies. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

CouchOne, which has raised $2 million in venture funding, provides database products powered by CouchDB, a free open source indexable document database server which uses Javascript as a query language. CouchDB is designed for the reporting and storage of large amounts of semi-structured, document oriented data.

Membase’s data management technology, which was launched in 2009, is designed for web-based companies, particularly startups that deal with large amounts of transactional data. For example, social gaming giant Zynga and AOL use Membase’s database technology. Membase’s elastic data infrastructure software promises to cache frequently used data while also offering performance and scalability. In fact, Membase, which has raised $15 million in funding, says that its core technology powers 18 of the top 20 largest websites.

As part of the deal, Membase’s CEO, Bob Wiederhold, will become CEO of the combined company, with CouchOne CEO Damien Katz serving as Couchbase CTO. However, the merger not only results in the joining of two companies, but also combines CouchDB, memcached and Membase technologies. Together, the new company, Couchbase, will offer an end-to-end database solution that can be stored on a single server or spread across hundreds of servers.

Both Membase and CouchOne’s founders say the merger makes the end product a more comprehensive offering. For example, now Couchbase’s offerings are optimized for the data center, desktop and mobile devices. Products will include Elastic Couchbase (formerly Membase Server, Couchbase (for smaller Couchbase production deployments), mobile Couchbase (for iOS apps), and Hosted Couchbase.