Aster Data Systems has announced the Aster nCluster Cloud Edition. The Aster nCluster is an analytical database system for supporting very large relational databases. Aster joins companies such as Vertica and Kognitio in providing data warehousing capabilities on a cloud computing platform. Aster supports both the Amazon and AppNextus cloud computing environments.

This announcement demonstrates the growing demand for analytical processing from companies that have a significant presence in the web marketplace. One of the users of the CloudEdition, for example, is Didit, a web ad marketing company. These types of companies need to analyze huge amounts of web-related data.

One interesting aspect of Aster is its support for MapReduce, which is a growing trend by database companies Greenplum has MapReduce support and IBM is working on supporting it (System S research project). MapReduce provides a framework for massive parallel processing and is used by a number of web-centric companies such as Google. A key distinguishing feature for Aster is that it supports custom SQL functions that exploit MapReduce. MapReduce capabilities could become a key differentiator in high volume cloud computing data warehousing environments.  

You can find out more about the use of MapReduce in database systems in an article I published on the BeyeNetwork entitled "Are Relational Database Systems Keeping Up with the Information Processing Needs of Companies?"

Given my database background, it's exciting to see that database products are moving away from being commodity items are now offering some important distinguishing features.