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Top 4 Reasons to Use MongoDB 8.0
October 2, 2024
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Hanabi Technologies Uses MongoDB to Power AI Assistant, Hana
For all the hype surrounding generative AI, cynics tend to view the few real-world implementations as little more than “fancy chatbots.” But for Abhinav Aggarwal, CEO of Hanabi Technologies, the idea of a generative AI-powered bot that is more than just an assistant was intriguing. “I’d been using ChatGPT since it launched,” said Aggarwal. “That got me thinking: How could we make a chatbot that was like a team member?” And with that concept, Hana was born. The problem with bots “Most generative AI chatbots do not act like people; they wait for a command and give a response,” said Aggarwal. “We wanted to create a human-like chatbot that would proactively help people based on what they wanted—automating reminders, for example, or fetching time zones from your calendar to correctly schedule meetings.” Hanabi’s flagship product, Hana, is an AI assistant designed to enhance team collaboration within Google Chat, working in concert with Google Workspace and its suite of products. “Our target customers are smaller companies of between 10 and 50 people. At this size you’re not going to build your own agent from scratch,” he said. Hana integrates with Google APIs to deliver a human-like assistant that chimes in with helpful interventions, such as automatically setting reminders and making sure meetings are booked in the right time zone for each participant. “Hana is designed to bring AI to smaller companies and help them collaborate in a space where they are already working—Google Workspace,” Aggarwal explained. The MongoDB Atlas solution For Hana to act like a member of the team, Hanabi needed to process massive amounts of data to support advanced features like retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) for better information retrieval across Google Docs and many other sources. And with a rapidly growing user base of over 600 organizations and 17,000+ installs, Hanabi also required a secure, scalable, and high-performing data storage solution. MongoDB Atlas provided a flexible document model, built-in vector database, and scalable cloud-based infrastructure, freeing Hanabi engineers to build new features for Hana rather than focusing on rote tasks like data extract, transform, and load processes or manual scaling and provisioning. Now, MongoDB Atlas handles a variety of responsibilities: Scalability and security: MongoDB Atlas’s auto-scaling and automatic backup features have enabled Hanabi to seamlessly grow its user base without the need for manual database management. RAG: MongoDB Atlas plays a critical role in Hana’s RAG functionality. The platform enables Hanabi to split Google Docs into small sections, create embeddings, and store these sections in Atlas’s vector database. Development Processes: According to Aggarwal, MongoDB’s flexibility in managing changing schemas has been essential to the company’s fast-paced development cycle. Data Visualization: Using MongoDB Atlas Charts has enabled Hanabi to create comprehensive dashboards for real-time data visualization. This has helped the team track usage, set reminders, and optimize performance without needing to build a manual dashboard. Impact and results With MongoDB Atlas, Hanabi can successfully scale Hana to meet the demands of its rapidly expanding user base. The integration is also enabling Hana to offer powerful features like automatic interactions with customers, advanced information retrieval from Google Docs, and manually added memory snippets, making it an essential tool for teams around the world. Next steps Hanabi plans to continue integrating more tools into Hana while expanding its reach to personal Gmail users. The company is also rolling out a new automatic-interaction feature, further enhancing Hana’s ability to proactively assist users without direct commands. MongoDB Atlas remains a key component of Hanabi’s stack, alongside Google Kubernetes Engine, NestJS, and LangChain, enabling Hanabi to focus on innovating to improve the customer experience. Tech Stack MongoDB Atlas Google Kubernetes Engine NestJS LangChain Are you building AI apps? Join the MongoDB AI Innovators Program today! Successful participants gain access to free MongoDB Atlas credits, technical enablement, and invaluable connections within the broader AI ecosystem. If your company is interested in being featured, we’d love to hear from you. Connect with us at ai_adopters@mongodb.com.
Staff Engineering at MongoDB: Your Path to Making Broad Impact
Andrew Whitaker is a Senior Staff Engineer at MongoDB. His previous experience spans tiny startups to enormous organizations like AWS, where he held several different roles focusing on databases. Before joining MongoDB, he worked at a startup building optimized machine learning models in the cloud. Read on to learn more about why Andrew decided to join MongoDB in a senior-level engineering role and how his work is driving improvement within our engineering organization. Why MongoDB I have long been a fan of MongoDB’s products and services. MongoDB the database has always been a pleasure to work with – the system “brings joy” to quote a phrase. As a Python developer, I appreciate how the Python driver feels “Pythonic” in a completely natural way. The programmer interacts with the database using Python constructs: dictionaries, lists, and primitive types. By contrast, SQL databases force me to change my mental model, and the query language feels like an add-on that does not blend with the core language. As an engineer, I am always looking to expand my knowledge and grow my skills. The scope of challenges engineers face at MongoDB is what triggered my interest in the company. We obviously have people working on core databases and distributed systems. But, we also have teams dedicated to machine learning, streaming data, analytics, networking, developer tooling, drivers, and many more areas. It is very hard to get bored working at MongoDB. Finally, I would be remiss if I did not mention the people. Overall, MongoDB’s engineering culture prioritizes intelligence, low ego, and an ability to get stuff done. CL/CI (Continuous Learning, Continuous Improvement) Working at MongoDB has provided me with opportunities for continued learning and growth. Though I do not program as much as I did earlier in my career, I have recently been exploring the Rust language. I’m excited by Rust because it avoids the tradeoffs between predictable performance and safety. My work in the search space has given me exposure to the fast moving world of AI: vector embeddings, RAG, etc. For various reasons, I think MongoDB is uniquely positioned to do well in this area. On top of this, I’m working on some initiatives that are not fully public. I can say that one focus area is improving the sharding experience for our customers. We believe MongoDB sharding is best-in-breed. Still, the process requires more manual configuration than we think is ideal: customers select the shard key, cluster type, shard count, etc. We give guidance here, but I think we can raise the bar in terms of offering a seamless experience with less “futz”. I’m also working with the search team. We believe there is a natural affinity between MongoDB’s document model and AI/ML workloads. We have some features in the works that extend this integration in new and interesting ways. I also spend a fair bit of time driving quality improvements across our suite of products. Our CTO Jim Scharf frequently refers to our “ big 4 ” goals: security, durability, availability, and performance. These goals are more important than any feature we build. I’ve been working across the company to help teams define their availability SLO/SLAs. It turns out that measuring availability is a subtle topic. For example, a naive approach of counting the percentage of failed requests can underestimate downtime because customers make fewer requests when a service is unavailable. So, the first step is to clarify the definition of availability. Finally, as a lapsed academic (in a distant life, I was a graduate student at the University of Washington Department of Computer Science and Engineering), I’m always interested in finding ways to bridge theory and practice. I’ve been collaborating with some folks in our research team to drive improvements to our replication protocols. There are theoretical results that suggest it is impossible to simultaneously achieve low latency and strong consistency (“linearizability” in the technical jargon). However, we believe there are intermediate points in the consistency/latency spectrum that have not been fully explored. This work hasn't been made into a product yet, but stay tuned. Flexible working MongoDB is a hybrid company. Like many of our engineers, I work outside the company headquarters in New York City (I live in Seattle). I appreciate MongoDB’s approach to hybrid working and that company leadership, starting with Dev , cares about the well-being of their employees. It seems there are companies that don’t seem to trust their employees to make decisions, such as which days to come into the office, so I’m thankful for the autonomy I receive at MongoDB to work in a way that’s best for me. Remote work has its challenges, but I would say that the benefit for my work/life balance has been transformative. Final thoughts I have found MongoDB engineers demonstrate a strong mix of technical depth, pragmatism, and empathy. I have yet to find the “smart jerk” prototype that seems to exist throughout the tech industry. Overall, I have found MongoDB is open to change and growth at both the team level and the individual level. There is a willingness to evolve and improve that aligns with the company’s values and leadership principles and enables the success of our technology and people. Find out more about MongoDB culture and career opportunities by joining our talent community .
3 Ways MongoDB EA Azure Arc Certification Serves Customers
One reason more than 50,000 customers across industries choose MongoDB is the freedom to run anywhere—across major cloud providers, on-premises in data centers, and in hybrid deployments. This is why MongoDB is always working to meet customers where they are. For example, many customers choose MongoDB Atlas (which is available in more than 115 cloud regions across major cloud providers) for a fully managed experience. Other customers choose MongoDB Enterprise Advanced (EA) to self-manage their database deployments to meet specific on-premises or hybrid requirements. To that end, we’re pleased to announce that MongoDB EA is one of the first certified Microsoft Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes applications, which provides customers even more choice of where and how they run MongoDB. Customer adoption of Azure Arc has grown by leaps and bounds. This new certification, and the launch of MongoDB EA as an Arc-enabled Kubernetes application on Azure Marketplace , means that more customers will be able to leverage the unparalleled security, availability, durability, and performance of MongoDB across environments with the centralized management of their Kubernetes deployments. We are very excited to have MongoDB available for our customers on the Azure Marketplace. By extending Azure Arc’s management capabilities to your MongoDB deployments, customers gain the benefit of centralized governance, enhanced security, and deeper insights into database performance. Azure Arc makes hybrid database management with MongoDB efficient and consistent. Collaboration between MongoDB and Microsoft represents an opportunity for many of our customers to further accelerate their digital transformation when building enterprise-class solutions with Azure Arc. Christa St Pierre, Partner Group Manager, Azure Edge Devices, Microsoft Here are three ways the launch of MongoDB EA on Azure Marketplace for Arc-enabled Kubernetes applications gives customers greater flexibility. 1. MongoDB EA supports multi-Kubernetes cluster deployments, simplifies management MongoDB Enterprise Advanced seamlessly integrates market-leading MongoDB capabilities along with robust enterprise support and tools for self-managed deployments at any scale. This powerful solution includes advanced automation, comprehensive auditing, strong authentication, reliable backup, and insightful monitoring capabilities, all of which work together to ensure security compliance and operational efficiency for organizations of any size. The relationship between MongoDB and Kubernetes is one of strong synergy. With Kubernetes, MongoDB EA really can run anywhere, such as a single deployment spanning on-premises and more than one public cloud Kubernetes cluster. Customers can use the MongoDB Enterprise Kubernetes Operator, a key component of MongoDB Enterprise Advanced, to simplify the management and automation of self-managed MongoDB deployments in Kubernetes. This includes tasks like creating and updating deployments, managing backups, and integrating with various Kubernetes services. The ability of the MongoDB Enterprise Kubernetes Operator to deploy and manage MongoDB deployments that span multiple Kubernetes clusters significantly enhances resilience, improves disaster recovery, and minimizes latency by allowing data to be co-located closer to where it is needed, ensuring optimal performance and reliability. 2. Azure Arc complements MongoDB EA, providing centralized management While MongoDB Enterprise Advanced is already among a select group of databases capable of operating across multiple Kubernetes clusters , it is now also supported in Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes environments. Azure Arc enables the standardized management of Kubernetes clusters across various environments—including in Azure, on-premises, and even other clouds—while harnessing the power of Azure services. Azure Arc accomplishes this by extending the Azure control plane to standardize security and governance across a wide range of resources and locations. For instance, organizations can centrally monitor all of the Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes clusters using Azure Monitor for containers , or they can enforce threat protection at scale using Microsoft Defender for Kubernetes. This centralized control significantly reduces the complexity of managing Kubernetes clusters running anywhere, as customers can oversee all resources and apply consistent security and compliance policies across their hybrid environment. 3. Customers can leverage the resilience of MongoDB EA and the centralized governance of Azure Arc Together, these solutions empower organizations to build robust applications across a wide array of environments, whether on-premises or in multi-cloud settings. The combination of MongoDB Enterprise Advanced and the MongoDB Enterprise Operator simplifies the deployment of MongoDB across Kubernetes clusters, allowing organizations to fully leverage enhanced resilience and geographic distribution that surpasses the capabilities of a single Kubernetes cluster. Azure Arc further enhances this synergy by providing centralized management for all of these Kubernetes clusters, regardless of where they are running; for customers running entirely in the public cloud, we recommend using MongoDB’s fully managed developer data platform, MongoDB Atlas. If you’re interested in learning more, we invite you to explore the Azure Marketplace listing for MongoDB Enterprise Advanced for Arc-enabled Kubernetes applications. Please note that aside from use for evaluation and development purposes, this offering requires the purchase of a MongoDB Enterprise Advanced subscription. For licensing inquiries, we encourage you to reach out to MongoDB at https://www.mongodb.com/contact to secure your license and to begin harnessing the full potential of these powerful solutions.
Accelerating MongoDB Migration to Azure with Microsoft Migration Factory
Migrating MongoDB workloads from on-premises solutions or other cloud platforms to MongoDB Atlas on Azure has never been simpler, thanks to Microsoft’s Cloud Migration Factory (CMF). This newly created program is perfect for organizations using MongoDB Enterprise Advanced or Community Edition who are ready to modernize. By transitioning to MongoDB Atlas —an integrated suite of data and applications services—customers can simplify their database management, enhance performance, and reduce operational complexities, unlocking new potential and value from their data. Why the Microsoft Cloud Migration Factory (CMF)? The Microsoft CMF offers hands-on delivery for eligible workloads to accelerate customer journeys on Azure at no cost. With repeatable best practices, robust tools, structured processes, and a skilled resource pool, the Microsoft CMF delivery model mitigates technical risk and accelerates deployments with optimized architectures to maximize platform benefits. The MongoDB Migration Factory, meanwhile, is a comprehensive program designed to help organizations migrate their existing databases to MongoDB. This program provides a structured approach, tools, and best practices to ensure a smooth and efficient migration process. Microsoft CMF is partnering with MongoDB Migration Factory to jointly deliver migrations of MongoDB Enterprise Advanced or Community Edition deployments to MongoDB Atlas on Azure in a secure, optimized, and customer-focused way. This comprehensive migration approach enables businesses to leverage Azure for their MongoDB-based solutions with speed, confidence, best practices, and minimal disruption risk at an optimized cost. “This joint delivery offering from Microsoft Cloud Migration Factory (CMF) and MongoDB Migration Factory is designed to accelerate AI transformation priorities for our customers by driving the migrations to MongoDB Atlas on Azure with speed and quality,” said Rashida Hodge, Corporate Vice President of Azure Data and AI at Microsoft. “We have delivered thousands of customer engagements with the CMF model across all Azure workloads, making it a proven approach for accelerating cloud journeys with Microsoft-owned delivery.” Why MongoDB Atlas on Azure? MongoDB Atlas on Azure combines MongoDB’s robust document data platform with Azure’s scalability and advanced cloud services, making it ideal for high-performance applications. Offering features like automatic scaling, high availability, and comprehensive security, MongoDB Atlas on Azure supports diverse workloads, including transaction processing, in-app analytics, and full-text search. Integrations with Azure services—including Azure Synapse Analytics, Microsoft Fabric, and Power BI—enhance MongoDB Atlas’s analytics and visualization capabilities, and compliance with standards like HIPAA and GDPR ensures data privacy, enabling organizations to focus on innovation in a secure, scalable environment. Figure 1: MongoDB Atlas on Azure Integrations ecosystem Migrating MongoDB Community Edition or Enterprise Advanced to MongoDB Atlas on Azure Migrating from MongoDB Community Edition or MongoDB Enterprise Advanced to MongoDB Atlas on Azure offers numerous benefits, including enhanced scalability, security, and operational efficiency. MongoDB Atlas is a fully managed, cloud-based solution that simplifies database management by handling tasks like automatic scaling, high availability, and data backup. Leveraging Azure’s infrastructure, Atlas provides integrated services such as Azure Active Directory for improved authentication and identity management, and global cloud coverage to reduce latency by deploying clusters closer to users. MongoDB Atlas on Azure also includes robust security features like encryption at rest and in transit, network isolation, and advanced access controls, meeting compliance standards. These features are often difficult to implement in a self-managed environment. Additionally, Atlas offers advanced monitoring and automated tuning tools for optimizing database performance and resource usage, helping to reduce costs over time. For organizations considering migration to MongoDB Atlas, Microsoft CMF offers end-to-end guidance, providing a clear roadmap for every stage of the migration process, from initial validation to post-migration testing. With flexible migration paths that cater to a range of needs, Microsoft CMF supports live migrations using tools like mongosync and offline migrations with MongoDB’s native tools, enabling everything from minimal-downtime transitions to complete re-hosting. Best of all, Microsoft CMF is a complimentary service, which means that organizations don’t need to worry about budgets and can focus on the transition to MongoDB Atlas on Azure. In collaboration with MongoDB Professional Services, the CSX team leveraged MongoDB and Microsoft Migration Factory to migrate a mission-critical railroad transportation app quickly and seamlessly with zero downtime. John Maio, Department Head, Enterprise Data & Analytics at CSX Getting started Microsoft CMF’s structured approach guides organizations through each critical milestone to ensure a smooth migration process. For those interested in migrating their MongoDB setup to Azure, contact MongoDB today to take advantage of this free migration opportunity and experience the ease of MongoDB Atlas on Azure with Microsoft CMF support.
MongoDB Database Observability: Integrating with Monitoring Tools
This post is the final in a three-part series on leveraging database observability. Welcome back to our series on Leveraging Database Observability! Our previous post showcased a real-world use case highlighting how MongoDB Atlas’s observability tools effectively tackle database performance challenges. Whether you’re a developer, DBA, or DevOps engineer, our mission is to empower you to harness the full potential of your data through our observability suite . Integrating Atlas metrics with your central enterprise observability tools can simplify your operations. By seamlessly working with popular observability tools, our approach helps teams streamline workflows and enhance visibility across systems. Integrating MongoDB Atlas with third-party monitoring tools MongoDB’s developer data platform combines all essential data services for building modern applications within a unified experience. Our purpose-built observability tools for Atlas environments offer automatic monitoring and optimization, guiding diagnostics tailored specifically for MongoDB. Additionally, we extend Atlas metrics into your existing enterprise observability stack, enabling seamless integration without replacing your current tools. This creates a consolidated, single-pane view that unifies Atlas telemetry with other tech and application metrics, ensuring comprehensive visibility into both database and full-stack performance. This integration empowers you to monitor, receive alerts, and make data-driven decisions within your existing workflows, driving greater efficiency. Below is a quick guide to modifying integration settings through the Atlas UI and the popular integrations we support: Navigate to the Project Integrations page in Atlas. Choose the organization and project you want to configure from the navigation bar. On the Project Integrations page, select the third-party services you’d like to integrate. Configure the chosen services with the required API keys and regions. Critical integrations for your observability platform With Atlas’s Datadog and Prometheus integrations, you can send critical MongoDB metrics to these platforms, empowering detailed, real-time monitoring. Through Datadog , you can track database operation counts, query efficiency, and resource usage, ideal for pinpointing bottlenecks and managing resources. Similarly, Prometheus enables you to monitor essential metrics like query times, connection rates, and memory usage, supporting flexible tracking of database health and performance. Both integrations facilitate proactive detection of issues, alert configuration for resource thresholds, and a cohesive view of Atlas data when visualized in Grafana. Atlas’s integration with PagerDuty streamlines incident management by sending metrics like performance alerts, billing anomalies, and security events directly to PagerDuty. This integration records incidents automatically, notifies teams upon alerts, and supports two-way syncing, ensuring resolved alerts in Atlas are reflected in PagerDuty. It enables efficient incident response and resource allocation to maintain system stability. With Atlas integrations for Microsoft Teams and Slack, you can route key metrics—such as query latency, disk usage, and throughput—to these channels for timely updates. Teams can use these insights for real-time performance monitoring, incident response, and collaboration. Notifications through these platforms ensure your team stays informed on database performance, storage health, and user activity changes as they occur. Use case: Centralized observability with MongoDB Atlas, Datadog, and Slack Let’s walk through a hypothetical scenario for ShopSmart, an e-commerce company that leverages MongoDB Atlas to manage its product catalog and customer data. As traffic surges, the DevOps team faces challenges in monitoring application performance and database health effectively. To tackle these challenges, the team leverages MongoDB Atlas’ integration with Datadog and Slack, creating a powerful observability ecosystem. Integrating MongoDB Atlas with Datadog: The team pushes key MongoDB Atlas metrics into Datadog, such as query performance, connection counts, and Atlas Vector Search metrics. With Datadog, they can visualize these metrics and correlate overall MongoDB performance with their other applications. Out-of-the-box monitors and dedicated dashboards allow the team to track metrics like throughput, average read/write latency, and current connections. This visibility helps pinpoint bottlenecks in real time, ensuring optimal database performance and improving overall application responsiveness. Setting up alerts in Datadog: The team configures alerts for critical metrics like high query latency and increased error rates. When thresholds are breached, Datadog instantly notifies the team. This proactive approach allows the team to address potential performance issues before they impact customers. Integrating Datadog with Slack: To ensure fast communication, alerts are sent directly to the dedicated Slack channel, “ShopSmart-Alerts.” This integration fosters seamless collaboration, enabling the team to discuss and resolve issues in real-time. With these integrations, ShopSmart’s engineering team can monitor performance quickly and address issues efficiently. The unified observability approach enhances operational efficiency, improves the customer experience, and supports ShopSmart’s competitive edge in the e-commerce industry. By leveraging MongoDB Atlas, Datadog, and Slack, the team ensures scalable performance and drives continuous innovation. Conclusion MongoDB Atlas empowers developers and organizations to achieve unparalleled observability and control over their database environments. By seamlessly integrating with central enterprise observability tools, Atlas enhances your ability to monitor performance metrics and ensures you can do so within your existing workflows. This means you can focus on building modern applications confidently, knowing you have the insights and alerts necessary to maintain optimal performance. Embrace the power of MongoDB Atlas and transform your approach to database management—because your applications can thrive when your data is observable. And that wraps up our Leveraging Database Observability series! We hope you learned something new and found value in these discussions. Sign up for MongoDB Atlas , our cloud database service, to see database observability in action. To dive deeper and expand your knowledge, check out this learning byte for more insights on the MongoDB observability suite and how it can enhance your database performance.
MongoDB, Microsoft Team Up to Enhance Copilot in VS Code
As modern applications grow increasingly complex, developers face the challenge of meeting market demands for faster, smarter solutions. To stay ahead, they need tools that streamline their workflows, available directly in the environments where they build. According to the 2024 Stack Overflow Developer Survey , Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code (VS Code) is the integrated development environment (IDE) of choice for 74% of professional developers, serving as a central hub for building, testing, and deploying applications. With the rise of AI-powered tools like GitHub Copilot—which is used by 44% of professional developers—there’s a growing demand for intelligent assistance in the development process without disrupting flow. At MongoDB, we believe that the future of development lies in democratizing the value of these experiences by incorporating domain-specific knowledge and capabilities directly into developer flows. That’s why we’re thrilled to announce the public preview of MongoDB’s extension to GitHub Copilot in VS Code. With this integration, developers can effortlessly generate MongoDB queries, inspect collection schemas, and get answers from the latest MongoDB docs—all without leaving their IDE. Our collaboration with MongoDB continues to bring powerful, integrated solutions to developers building the modern applications of the future. The new MongoDB extension for GitHub Copilot exemplifies a shared commitment to the developer experience, leveraging AI to ensure that workflows are optimized for developer productivity by keeping everything developers need within reach, without breaking their flow. Isidor Nikolic, Senior Product Manager for VS Code, Microsoft But we’re not stopping there. As AI continues to evolve, so will the ways developers interact with their tools. Stay tuned for more exciting developments next week at Microsoft Ignite , where we’ll unveil more ways we’re pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with AI through MongoDB and Microsoft’s partnership! What is MongoDB's Copilot extension? MongoDB’s Copilot extension supercharges your GitHub Copilot in VS Code with MongoDB domain knowledge. The Copilot integration is built into the MongoDB for VS Code extension , which has more than 1.8M downloads in the VS Code marketplace today. Type ‘@MongoDB’ in Copilot chat and take advantage of three transformative commands: Generate queries from natural language (/query) —this generates accurate MongoDB queries by passing collection schema as context to Github Copilot Query MongoDB documentation (/docs) —this answers any documentation questions using the latest MongoDB documentation through Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) Browse collection schema (/schema) —this provides schema information for any collection and is useful for data modeling with the Copilot extension. Generate queries from natural language This command transforms natural language prompts into MongoDB queries, leveraging your collection schema to produce precise, valid queries. It eliminates the need to manually write complex query syntax, and allows developers to quickly extract data without taking their focus away from building applications. Whether you run the query directly from the Copilot chat or refine it in a MongoDB playground file, we’ve sped up the query-building process by deeply integrating these capabilities into the existing flow of MongoDB VS Code extension. Query MongoDB documentation The /docs command answers MongoDB documentation-specific questions, complemented by direct links to the official documentation site. There’s no need to switch back and forth between your browser and your IDE; the Copilot extension calls out to the MongoDB Documentation Chatbot API that leverages retrieval-augmented generation technology to generate responses that are informed by the most recent version of the MongoDB documentation. In the near future, these questions will be smartly routed to documentation for the specific server version of the cluster you are connected to in the MongoDB VS Code extension. Browse collection schema The /schema command offers quick access to collection schemas, making it easier for developers to access and interact with their data model in real-time. This can be helpful in situations where developers are debugging with Copilot or just want to know valid field names while developing their applications. Developers can additionally export collection schemas into JSON files or ask follow-up questions directly to brainstorm data modeling techniques with the MongoDB Copilot extension. On the Horizon This is just the start of our work on MongoDB’s Copilot extension. As we continue to improve the experience with new features—like translating and testing queries to and from popular programming languages, and in-line query generation in Playgrounds—we remain focused on democratizing AI-driven workflows, empowering developers to access the tools and knowledge they need to build smarter, faster, and more efficiently, right within their existing environments. Download MongoDB’s VS Code extension and enable the MongoDB chat experience to get started today.
MongoDB is a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Translytical Data Platforms
We’re pleased to announce that MongoDB has been recognized as a Leader in the recently released Forrester Wave™: Translytical Data Platforms, Q4 2024. The report—which highlights “Leaders, Strong Performers, Contenders, and Challengers” and is “an assessment of the top vendors in the market”—notes that “MongoDB is an excellent choice for organizations looking to enhance their document and NoSQL platforms with real-time insights by leveraging translytical capabilities.” What are translytical capabilities? So what are translytical capabilities? In short, modern applications use a growing number of data types for transactional, operational, and analytical uses. Developers can silo different data types and workloads into separate systems, but this causes architectural complexity and reduced agility for teams. A better approach—and one that speeds development—is to leverage a single platform that can store and use multiple data types for different purposes. Forrester defines these “translytical data platforms” as “next-generation data solutions built on a single database engine to seamlessly support transactional, operational, and analytical workloads without compromising data integrity, performance, or real-time analytics.” That’s why we built MongoDB Atlas as a developer data platform. It brings data like documents, vectors, streaming, and time-series together in one system so that you can run transactional, operational, and analytics workloads in one place. How Forrester measured translytical capabilities To measure providers, Forrester evaluated 15 of the most significant translytical data platform vendors against 26 criteria. These criteria span current offering and strategy, to market presence. Being recognized as a Leader is based on an organization’s scores in both current offering and strategy categories for criteria like vision and innovation. Forrester gave MongoDB the highest possible scores across nine criteria, including: Multimodel 1 Search Development Tools / API Scale optimization Streaming Platform management Roadmap Adoption Number of customers According to the report, “MongoDB continues to expand its translytical market share by delivering new capabilities that enhance automation, intelligent memory tiering, and multimodel support, including vector, streaming, analytics, and integrated transactions.” “Developers have been telling us for years that they need easy ways to work with all their data in one place,” said Jim Scharf, Chief Technology Officer at MongoDB. “That’s what continues to drive our strategy of making MongoDB Atlas the developer data platform. We’re excited to be recognized as a Leader in the new The Forrester Wave™: Translytical Data Platforms, and we will continue to support our customers’ growing needs for their data.” What are MongoDB customers doing with translytical capabilities? The Forrester report notes that organizations “use MongoDB to support real-time analytics, customer intelligence, the Internet of Things (IoT), and AI applications.” So, let’s look at a few examples in action. Companies like Ignition started using MongoDB just for operational data—but, over time, expanded into using Atlas Vector Search for AI use cases. Meanwhile, Bosch Digital makes their IoT data easier to work with by bringing multiple data sources together in a single platform. And, Keller Williams uses MongoDB Charts to bring their analytics to where their transactional data is, making it faster to gather insights for their product teams. Overall, customers are attracted to MongoDB because of how developer-friendly the platform is, and because it simplifies their lives by bringing their data together. Access your complimentary copy of The Forrester Wave™: Translytical Data Platforms, Q4 2024 here . Interested in starting your own translytical journey? Sign up for a free MongoDB Atlas account today! 1 Multimodel is defined as support for storing and using various data types.
MongoDB Helps Asian Retailers Scale and Innovate at Speed
More retailers across ASEAN are looking to the document database model to support the expansion of their businesses and respond quickly to ever-more-rapidly changing customer demands. Here are two stories shared during our MongoDB.local events in Indonesia and Malaysia in September 2024. Simplicity and offline availability: EasyEat empowers merchants to optimize dining experiences with MongoDB Atlas EasyEat delivers a software-as-a-service (SaaS) point-of-sale (POS) system tailored for restaurants. It simplifies daily operations, optimizes costs, and enhances customer satisfaction for merchants that provide food delivery and pickup services. The platform launched in 2020, and in less than 4 years it has grown to serve over 1,300 merchants and over four million consumers across Malaysia and Indonesia. Speaking at MongoDB.local Kuala Lumpur in September 2024 , Deepanshu Rawat, Engineering Manager at EasyEat, explained how MongoDB Atlas empowered EasyEat to rapidly scale its operations across both the merchant POS and consumer applications. EasyEat’s move from a SQL database to MongoDB Atlas also delivered greater flexibility, enabling faster product development and ease of use for the engineering team. For EasyEat, MongoDB Atlas is more than just a database. The retailer is making full use of the developer data platform’s unique features, including: Analytics node: EasyEat must regularly provide reports to its merchants. These queries tend to be complex, taking significant time to process and putting an excessive load on the system. “With MongoDB Atlas’s analytics node , we are able to process those heavy queries without it impacting our daily operations,” said Rawat. Atlas Triggers: EasyEat uses this feature to perform a range of asynchronous operations. “Using Atlas Triggers helps us optimize the performance of our applications,” said Rawat. MongoDB Atlas Search: EasyEat has started using MongoDB Atlas Search to execute faster and more efficient searches as its platform’s user base grows. “Atlas Search enables us to make searches in our user application very smooth, and on our end, we don’t face any delay or latency issues,” said Rawat. In addition, EasyEat is exploring a few other capabilities on MongoDB, including online archiving . The company is also considering how it can use generative AI via MongoDB Atlas Vector Search to build a personalized recommendations engine. From 10 seconds to 1: Alfamart drives 1,000% efficiency using MongoDB Atlas Alfamart is a leading retailer with over 19,000 stores across Indonesia and the Philippines. It serves 18.1 million customers and handles approximately 4.6 million retail transactions daily. Speaking at MongoDB.local Jakarta in September 2024 , Alfamart’s Chief Technology Officer, Bambang Setyawan Djojo, shared insights into how the company has used MongoDB Atlas to sustain massive scale and to power its digital transformation. The 2015-2020 period was critical for Alfamart. It was in the midst of rapid expansion and had an ambitious digital transformation agenda. In early 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic began, Alfamart’s offline transactions plummeted while its online transactions soared. “The growth of online transactions was not linear but exponential,” said Setyawan Djojo. “This was the moment: We knew we needed the tools to adapt quickly and go to market fast. This is when we decided to look for a new database.” With its previous SQL database, Alfamart struggled to handle the growing data load, particularly during peak hours. MongoDB Atlas’s flexible document database model delivered greater efficiency for Alfamart’s team of 350 developers. It also smoothly accommodated Alfamart’s need for sudden and significant upscaling. “Fast processing times are critical to keep our customers happy,” said Setyawan Djojo. “It used to take us 10 seconds to scan members during peak hours, but with MongoDB, it is now below one second.” Setyawan Djojo added, “MongoDB helped us eliminate a lot of downtime compared to our previous SQL database.” MongoDB Atlas’s auto-scaling capabilities were a game changer for Alfamart. “MongoDB can automatically scale up and down depending on the usage of resources and performance. So during peak times, the database can scale up, and once the transaction peak is passed, it can scale back down,” said Setyawan Djojo. Looking ahead, Alfamart plans to continue exploring the potential of the MongoDB Atlas platform to further increase productivity, efficiency, and flexibility. Visit our solutions page to learn more about how MongoDB is helping retailers innovate worldwide. Check out our quick-start guide to get started with MongoDB Atlas Vector Search today. Visit our product page to learn more about MongoDB Atlas Search .
Building Gen AI with MongoDB & AI Partners | October 2024
It’s no surprise that AI is a topic of seemingly every professional conversation and meeting nowadays—my friends joke that 11 out of 10 words that come out of my mouth are “gen AI.” But an important question remains: do organizations truly know how to harness AI, or do they simply feel pressured to join the crowd? Are they driven by FOMO more than anything else? One thing is for sure: adopting generative AI still presents a huge learning curve. Which is why we’ve been working to provide the right tools for companies to build innovative gen AI apps with, and why we offer organizations a variety of AI knowledge and guidance, regardless of where they are with gen AI. We’re fortunate to work with our industry-leading partners to help educate and shape this nascent market. Working so closely with them on product launches, integrations, and solving real-world challenges allows us to bring diverse perspectives and a better understanding of AI to our customers, giving them the technology and confidence to move forward even before engaging with tough use cases and specific technical problems (something that the MongoDB AI Applications Program can definitely help with). One of our main educational initiatives has been our webinar series with our top-tier MAAP partners. We’ve constantly launched video content to deepen understanding of topics essential to gen AI for enterprises answering broader questions such as “ how can my company generate AI-driven outcomes ” and “ how can I modernize my workload ,” to specific, tangible topics such as “ how to build a chatbot that knows my business .” Each session is designed to move beyond the basics, sharing insights from experts in AI, and addressing our customers’ burning questions and challenges that matter most to them. Welcoming new AI and tech partners In October, we also welcomed four new AI and tech partners that offer product integrations with MongoDB. Read on to learn more about each great new partner! Astronomer Astronomer empowers data teams to bring mission-critical software, analytics, and AI to life and is the company behind Astro, the industry-leading data orchestration and observability platform powered by Apache Airflow. " Astronomer's partnership with MongoDB is redefining RAG workflows for GenAI workloads. By integrating Astronomer's managed Apache Airflow platform with MongoDB Atlas' powerful vector database capabilities, we enable organizations to orchestrate complex data pipelines that fuel advanced AI and machine learning applications”, said Julian LaNeve, CTO at Astronomer. “This collaboration empowers data teams to manage real-time, high-dimensional data with ease, accelerating the journey from raw data to actionable insights and transforming how businesses harness the power of generative AI." CloudZero CloudZero is a cloud cost optimization platform that automates the collection, allocation, and analysis of cloud costs to identify savings opportunities and improve cloud efficiency rates. "Database spending is one of the shared costs that can make it tricky for organizations to reach 100% cost allocation. CloudZero eliminates that problem," said Anand Sundaram, Senior Vice President of Product at CloudZero. “ Our industry-leading allocation engine can organize MongoDB spend in a matter of hours , tracing it precisely to the products, features, customers, and/or teams responsible for it. This way, companies get a clear view of what’s driving their costs, who’s accountable, and how to optimize to maximize their cloud efficiency.” ObjectBox ObjectBox is an on-device vector database for mobile, IoT, and embedded devices that enables storing, syncing, and querying data locally online and offline. " We’re thrilled to partner with MongoDB to give developers an edge,” celebrated Vivien Dollinger, CEO and co-founder of ObjectBox. “By combining MongoDB’s cloud and scalability with ObjectBox’s high-performance on-device database and data sync, we empower developers to build fast, data-rich applications that feel right at home across devices and environments. Offline, online, edge, cloud, whenever, wherever... We’re here to enable your data with speed and reliability." Rasa Rasa is a flexible framework for building conversational AI platforms that lets companies develop scalable generative AI assistants that hit the market faster. “ Rasa is excited to partner with MongoDB to empower companies in building conversational AI experiences. Together, we’re helping create generative AI assistants that save costs, speed up development, and maintain full brand control and security,” said Melissa Gordon, CEO of Rasa. “With MongoDB, deploying production-ready generative AI assistants is seamless, and we’re eager to continue accelerating our customers’ journey toward trusted conversational AI solutions.” But wait, there's more! Whether you’re starting out or scaling up, MongoDB and our partners are here with the resources, expertise, and trusted guidance to help you succeed in your genAI strategy! And if you have any suggestions for a good webinar topic, don’t hesitate to reach out. To learn more about building AI-powered apps with MongoDB, check out our AI Resources Hub and stop by our Partner Ecosystem Catalog to read about our integrations with MongoDB’s ever-evolving AI partner ecosystem.
MongoDB: Powering Digital Natives
Today's rapidly evolving digital landscape is dominated by digital native companies, driving innovation . These are companies born in the digital age and who operate through digital channels with a business model enabled by technology and data. They are not only adept at using technology but are also reshaping the way software is developed and deployed. This article delves into the challenges and opportunities facing digital natives in modern application development, with a particular focus on the complexities of managing data. We’ll explore how the right data platform can empower your digital native organization to build high-quality software faster, adapt to changing market demands, and unlock the full potential of your business. Strong foundations: The four pillars of tech-fueled growth for digital natives Achieving explosive growth requires a strong foundation built on specific principles, which empower rapid scaling and success. Here, we explore the four key pillars that fuel tech-driven growth for digital natives: Product-market fit, fast: As a digital native, you must continuously ship and iterate products to achieve a quick product-market fit. This builds customer trust and captures opportunities before competitors can in an evolving market. Data and AI-driven decisions: You must leverage data to personalize experiences, automate processes, and guide product decisions. A robust data architecture feeds real-time data into AI models, enabling data-driven decisions organization-wide. Balance of freedom and control: Your developers must have the freedom to choose technologies, even as your organization maintains control over the infrastructure to manage risks and costs at scale. Selected technologies must integrate within your overall technology estate. Extensible and open technologies: You must explore disruptive technologies while maintaining existing systems. Freedom from platform and vendor lock-in enables quick adoption of innovations, from current generative AI capabilities to future technological advances. Data: The unsolved challenge in modern application development From cloud platforms and managed services to gen AI code assistants, advancements have transformed how engineering teams build, ship, and run applications: Agile methods and programmatic APIs streamline development, while CI/CD and infrastructure as code automate processes. Containerization, microservices, and serverless architectures enable modularity, while new languages and frameworks boost capabilities. Enhanced logging and monitoring tools provide deep application health insights. Figure 1: Tools and processes to maximize velocity. But none of these advancements address where developers spend most of their time— data . In fact, 73% of developers share time and again that working with data is the hardest part of building an application or feature. So why is data the problem? Traditionally, selecting a database, often an open-source relational one, is the first step in development. However, these databases can struggle with the characteristics of modern data: it’s high volume, unstructured, and constantly evolving. As applications mature and their data demands grow, development teams may encounter challenges with achieving scalability and maintaining service resilience. Some teams turn to NoSQL databases, but even then they find there are limited capabilities, pushing them back to relational databases. As the application gains traction, the business’s appetite for innovation grows, compelling development teams to incorporate an expanding array of database technologies. This results in an architectural sprawl, imposing on teams the challenges of mastering, sustaining, and harmonizing new technologies. Concurrently, the dynamic technology landscape undergoes constant evolution, demanding teams to swiftly adjust. As a result, self-contained, autonomous teams encounter these hurdles recurrently, highlighting the pressing need for streamlined solutions to mitigate complexity and enhance agility. Figure 2: The evolving tech landscape. Data sprawl: A major threat to developer productivity and business agility Data sprawl is slowing everyone down. The more systems we add, the harder it is for developers to keep up. Each new database brings its own unique language, format, and way of working. This creates a huge headache for managing everything—from buying new systems to making sure they all work together securely. It’s a constant battle to keep data accessible, consistent, and backed up across all these different platforms. Figure 3: Teams building on separate stacks leads to data sprawl and manageability issues across the organization It compromises every single one of the four outcomes your technology foundation should be providing, yielding the opposite results: Missed opportunities, lost customers: Fragmented development experiences consume time as engineers struggle with multiple technologies, frameworks, and extract, transform, and load mechanisms for duplicating data between systems. This slows down releases, degrades digital product quality, and impedes engineers from achieving product-market fit and effective competition. Flying blind: With your operational data siloed across multiple systems, you lack the data foundations necessary to use live data in shaping customer experiences or reacting to market changes. This is because you are unable to feed reliable, consistent, real-time data into your AI models to take action within the flow of the application or to provide the business with up-to-the-second visibility into operations. High attrition, high costs: Complex data architecture impacts development team culture, leading to siloed knowledge, inefficient collaboration, and decreased developer satisfaction. This complexity also consumes substantial resources in maintaining existing systems by diverting resources from new projects that are vital for business competition in new markets. Disruption from new technologies: Dependence on any one cloud provider can stifle innovation for development teams by restricting access to the latest technologies. Developers are confined to the tools and services offered by a single provider, hindering their ability to explore and integrate new, potentially more efficient, or advanced technologies. Speed: A unified developer experience for building high-quality software faster In today’s digital world, speed is king. Your customers expect seamless experiences, but clunky applications leave them frustrated. But traditional databases can be a bottleneck, struggling to keep pace with your ever-evolving data and slowing down development. The future of data is here, and it’s flexible: a data platform built for digital natives . It leverages a flexible document model, letting you store and work with your data exactly how you need it. This eliminates rigid structures and complex migrations, freeing your developers to focus on what matters—building amazing applications faster. Flexible document data models empower developers to handle today’s rapidly evolving application data ( 80%+ unstructured) that relational databases struggle with. MongoDB documents are richly typed, boosting developer productivity by eliminating the need for lengthy schema migrations when implementing new features. Developers get to use their preferred tools and languages. Through its drivers and integrations, MongoDB supports all of the most popular programming languages, frameworks, integrated development environments, and AI-code assistance tools. MongoDB scales! It starts small and scales globally. Built for elasticity and horizontal scaling, it handles massive workloads without app changes. Figure 4: A unified developer experience, integrating all necessary data services for building sophisticated modern applications Introducing MongoDB Atlas : a fully-managed cloud database built for the modern developer. It enables the integration of real-time data from devices with AI capabilities (through vector embeddings and large language models ) to personalize user experiences. Stream processing empowers constant data analysis, while in-app analytics provides real-time insights without needing separate data warehouses, all while automatically managing data movement and storage for cost-effectiveness. MongoDB Atlas simplifies database management with the following: Easy deployment via UI, API, CLI, Kubernetes, and infrastructure as code tools. Automated operations for cost-effective performance and real-time monitoring. MongoDB Atlas customer success stories: Development with speed, scale, and efficiency Delivery Hero Delivery Hero, a global leader in online food delivery, leverages MongoDB Atlas to power its rapid service. Founded in 2011, Delivery Hero now serves millions of customers in over 70 countries through brands like PedidosYa, foodpanda, and Glovo. Having replaced its legacy SQL database, Delivery Hero optimized operations and bolstered performance by using MongoDB Atlas. By leveraging MongoDB Atlas Search, Delivery Hero revolutionized its search functionality, ensuring a seamless user experience for its extensive customer base through simplified indexing and real-time data accuracy. MongoDB’s scalability has empowered Delivery Hero to manage over 100 million products in its catalog without encountering latency issues, enabling the company to expand its services while maintaining peak performance. This agility, coupled with MongoDB’s cost-effectiveness, has enabled Delivery Hero to swiftly adapt to evolving customer demands, solidifying its position in the fiercely competitive delivery market. MongoDB Atlas Search was a game changer. We ran a proof of concept and discovered how easy it is to use. We can index in one click, and because it’s a feature of MongoDB, we know data is always up-to-date and accurate. Andrii Hrachov, Principal Software Engineer, Delivery Hero Read the full customer story to learn more. Coinbase Coinbase, a prominent cryptocurrency exchange boasting 245,000 ecosystem partners and managing assets worth $273 billion , trusts MongoDB to handle its extensive data workload. As the company grew, MongoDB scaled seamlessly to accommodate the increased demand. To further improve performance in the fast-paced crypto world, Coinbase partnered with MongoDB to develop a system that significantly accelerated data transfer to reporting tools, reducing processing time from days to a mere 5-6 hours. This near real-time data access enables Coinbase to rapidly analyze trends and make informed decisions, maintaining a competitive edge in the ever-evolving crypto landscape. Watch Coinbase's full session at MongoDB.local Austin, 2024 to learn more. MongoDB: Your flexible platform for digital growth With MongoDB, you can freely explore, experiment, develop, and deploy according to your digital-native business needs. If you would like to learn more about how MongoDB can empower your digital-native business to conquer market trends, visit: Innovate With AI: The Future Enterprise Application-Driven Intelligence: Defining the Next Wave of Modern Apps AI-Driven Real-Time Pricing with MongoDB and Vertex AI
MongoDB and Partners: Building the AI Future, Together
If you’re like me, over the past year you’ve closely watched AI’s developments—and the world’s reactions to them. From infectious excitement about AI’s capabilities, to impatience with its cost and return on investment, every day has been filled with AI twists and turns. It’s been quite the roller coaster. During the ride, from time to time I’ve wondered where AI falls on the Gartner hype cycle, which gives "a view of how a technology or application will evolve over time." Have we hit the "peak of inflated expectations" only to fall into the "trough of disillusionment?" Or is the hype cycle an imperfect guide, as The Economist argues? The reality is that it takes time for any new technology—even transformative ones like AI—to take hold. And every advance, no matter how big, has had its detractors. A famous example is that of Picasso (!), who in 1968 said, “Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.” (!!) For our part, MongoDB is convinced that AI is a once-in-a-generation technology that will enhance every future application—a belief that has been reinforced by the incredible work our partners have shared at MongoDB’s 2024 events. Speeding AI development MongoDB is committed to helping organizations of all sizes succeed with AI, and one way we’re doing that is by collaborating with the MongoDB partner ecosystem to create powerful, user-friendly AI development tools and solutions. For example, Fireworks.ai —which is a member of the MongoDB AI Applications Program ecosystem —created an inference solution that hosts gen AI models and supports containerized deployments. This tool makes it easier for developers to build and deploy powerful applications with a range of easy-to-use tools and customization options. They can choose to use state-of-the-art, open-source language, image, and multimodal foundation models off the shelf, or they can customize and fine-tune models to their needs. Jointly, Fireworks.ai and MongoDB provide a solution for developers who want to leverage highly curated and optimized open-source models and combine these with their organization’s own proprietary data—and to do so with unparalleled speed and security. “MongoDB is one of the most sophisticated database providers, and it’s very easy to use,” said Benny Chen , cofounder of Fireworks.ai. "We want developers to be able to use these tools, and we want to work with providers who enable and empower developers." Nomic , another MAAP ecosystem member, also enables developers with best-in-class solutions across the entire unstructured data workflow. Their Embed offering, available through the Nomic API , allows users to vectorize large-scale datasets for use in text, image, and multimodal retrieval applications, including retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), using only their web browser. The Nomic-MongoDB solution is a highly efficient, open-weight model that developers can use to visualize the unstructured datasets they store in MongoDB Atlas . These insights help users quickly discover trends and articulate data-driven value propositions. Nomic also supported the recently announced vector quantization in MongoDB Atlas Vector Search , which reduces vector sizes while preserving performance. Last—but hardly least!—there’s our new reference architecture with MAAP partners AWS and Anthropic. Announced at MongoDB.local London , the reference architecture supports building memory-enhanced AI agents, and is designed to streamline complex processes and develop smarter, more responsive applications. For more—including a link to the code on Github— check out the MongoDB Developer Center . Making AI work for anyone and everyone The companies MongoDB partners with aren’t just making gen AI easier for developers—they’re building tools for everyone. For example, Capgemini has invested $2 billion in gen AI and is training 100,000 of its employees in the technology. GenYoda, a solution that helps insurance professionals with their daily work, is a product of this investment. GenYoda leverages MongoDB Atlas Vector Search to analyze large amounts of customer data, like policy statements, premiums, claims history, and health information. Using GenYoda, insurance professionals can quickly analyze underwriters’ reports to make informed decisions, create longitudinal health summaries, and streamline customer interactions to improve contact center efficiency. GenYoda can ingest 100,000 documents in just a few hours and respond to users’ queries in two to three seconds—a metric on par with the most widely used gen AI models. And it produces results: in one example, by using Capgemini’s solution an insurer was able to increase productivity by 15%, add new reports 25% faster (thus speeding decision-making), and reduce the manual effort of searching PDFs, increasing efficiency by 10%. Building the future of AI together So, what’s next? Honestly, I’m as curious as you are. But I’m also incredibly excited. At MongoDB, we’re active participants in the AI revolution, working to embrace the possibilities that lie ahead. The future of gen AI is bright, and I can’t wait to see what we’ll build together. To learn more about how MongoDB can accelerate your AI journey, explore the MongoDB AI Applications Program .
MongoDB Atlas Introduces Enhanced Cost Optimization Tools
MongoDB Atlas was designed with elasticity at its core and has always allowed customers to scale capacity vertically and horizontally, as required and automatically. Today, these inherent capabilities are even better and more cost-effective. At the recent MongoDB.local London, MongoDB announced several new MongoDB Atlas features that improve elasticity and help optimize costs while maintaining the performance and availability that business-critical applications demand. These include scaling each shard independently, extending storage beyond 4 TB or more , and 5X more responsive auto-scaling . Organizations and their customers are inherently dynamic, with operations, web traffic, and application usage growing unpredictably and non-linearly. For example, website traffic can spike due to a single video going viral on social media, and holidays are a frequent cause of application usage slowdowns. Traditionally, organizations have tackled this volatility by over-provisioning infrastructure, often at significant cost. Cloud adoption has improved the speed at which infrastructure can be provisioned in response to growing and volatile demand. Simultaneously, companies are focused on striking the perfect balance between performance and cost efficiency. This balance is acute in the current economic climate, where cost optimization is a top priority for Infrastructure & IT Operations (I&O) leaders. The goal is not balance between supply and demand. The goal is to meet the most profitable and mission-critical demand with the resources available. Nathan Hill, Distinguished VP Analyst, Gartner - Dec 2023 However, scaling infrastructure to meet demand without overprovisioning can be complex and costly. Organizations have often relied on manual processes (like scheduled scripts) or dedicated teams (like IT ops) to manage this challenge. MongoDB Atlas enables a more effective approach. With MongoDB Atlas, customers can manage flexible provisioning, zero-downtime scaling, and easy auto-scaling of their clusters. From October 2024, all Atlas customers with dedicated tier clusters can employ these recently announced enhancements for improved cost optimization. Granular resource provisioning MongoDB’s tens of thousands of customers have complex and diverse workloads with constantly changing requirements. Over time, workloads can grow unpredictably, requiring scaling up storage, compute, and IOPS independently and at differing granularities. Imagine a global retailer preparing for Cyber Monday, when traffic could be 512% higher than average — additional resources to serve customers are vital. Independent shard scaling enables customers running MongoDB Atlas to do this in a cost-optimal manner. Customers can independently scale the tier of individual shards in a cluster when one or more shards experience disproportionately higher traffic. For customers running workloads on sharded clusters, scaling each shard independently of all other shards is now an option (for example, only the shards serving US traffic during Thanksgiving). Customers can scale operational and analytical nodes independently in a single shard. This improves scalability and cost-optimization by providing fine-grained control to add resources to hot shards while maintaining the resources provisioned to other shards. All Atlas customers running dedicated clusters can use this feature through Terraform and the Admin API . Support for independent shard auto-scaling and configuration management via the Admin API and Terraform will be available in late 2024. Extended Storage and IOPS in Azure : MongoDB is introducing the ability to provision additional storage and IOPS on Atlas clusters running on Azure. This enables support for optimal performance without over-provisioning. Customers can create new clusters on Azure to provision additional IOPS and extended storage with 4TB or more on larger clusters (M40+). This feature is being rolled out and will be available to all Atlas clusters by late 2024. Head over to our docs page to learn more. With these updates, customers have greater flexibility and granularity in provisioning and scaling resources across their Atlas clusters on all three major cloud providers. Therefore, customers can optimize for performance and costs more effectively. More responsive auto-scaling Granular provisioning is excellent for optimizing costs while ensuring availability for an expected increase in traffic. However, what happens if a website gets 13X higher traffic or a surge in app interactions due to an unexpected social media post? Several enhancements to the algorithms and infrastructure powering MongoDB’s auto-scaling capabilities were announced in October 2024 at .local London . Cumulatively, these improve the time taken to scale and the responsiveness of MongoDB’s auto-scaling engine. Customers running dynamic workloads, particularly those with sharper peaks, will see up to 5X improvement in responsiveness. Smarter scaling decisions by Atlas will ensure that resource provisioning is optimized while maintaining high performance. This capability is available on all Atlas clusters with auto-scaling turned on, and customers should experience the benefits immediately. Industry-leading MongoDB Atlas customers like Conrad and Current use auto-scaling to automatically scale their compute capacity, storage capacity, or both without needing custom scripts, manual intervention, or third-party consulting services. Customers can set upper and lower tier limits, and Atlas will automatically scale their storage and tiers depending on their workload demands. This ensures clusters always have the optimal resources to maintain performance while optimizing costs. Take a look at how Coinbase is optimizing for both availability and cost in the volatile world of cryptocurrency with MongoDB Atlas’ help, or read our auto-scaling docs page to learn more. Optimize price and performance with MongoDB Atlas As businesses focus more on optimizing cloud infrastructure costs, the latest MongoDB Atlas enhancements— independent shard scaling, more responsive auto-scaling, and extended storage with IOPS—empower organizations to manage resources efficiently while maintaining top performance. These tools provide the flexibility and control needed to achieve cost-effective scalability. Ready to take control of your cloud costs? Sign up for a free trial today or spin up a cluster to get the performance, availability, and cost efficiency you need.