Revolutionizing Data Storage and Analytics with MongoDB Atlas on Google Cloud and HCL

Peter Kim and Siva G Subramanian
January 13, 2022

Every organization requires data they can trust—and access—regardless of its format, size, or location. The rapid pace of change in technology and the shift towards cloud computing is revolutionizing how companies handle, govern and manage their data by freeing them from the heavy operational burden of on-premise deployments. Enterprises are looking for a centralized, cost-effective solution that allows them to scale their storage and analytics so they can ingest data and perform artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) operations, ultimately expanding their marketing horizon.

This blog post explores why companies should partner with MongoDB Atlas on Google Cloud to begin their data revolution journey, and how HCL Technologies can support customers looking to migrate.

MongoDB Atlas as the distributed data platform

MongoDB Atlas is the leading database-as-a-service on the market for three main reasons:

Unparalleled developer experience - allows organizations to bring new features to market at a high velocity
Horizontal scalability - supports hundreds of terabytes of data with sub-second queries
Flexibility - stores data to meet various regulatory, operational, and high availability requirements.

The versatility offered by MongoDB’s document model makes it ideal for modern data-driven use cases that require support for structured, semi-structured, and unstructured content all within a single platform. Its flexible schema allows changes to support new application features without costly schema migrations typically required with relational databases.

MongoDB Atlas extends the core database by offering services like Atlas Search and MongoDB Realm that are a necessity for modern applications. Atlas Search provides a powerful Apache Lucene-based full text search engine that automatically indexes data in your MongoDB database without the need for a separate dedicated search engine or error-prone replication processes. Realm provides edge-to-cloud sync and backend services to accelerate and simplify mobile and web development.

Atlas’ distributed architecture supports horizontal scaling for data volume, query latency, and query throughput which offers the scalability benefits of distributed data storage alongside the rich functionality of a fully-featured general purpose database.

MongoDB Atlas is unique in its ability to provide the most wanted database as a managed service and is relied on by the world’s largest companies for their mission-critical production applications.

Innovation powered by collaboration with HCL Technologies

MongoDB’s versatility as a general-purpose database, in addition to its massive scalability, makes it a perfect foundation for analytics, visualization, and AI/ML applications on Google Cloud.

As an MSP partner for Google Cloud, HCL Technologies helps enterprises accelerate and risk-mitigate their digital agenda, powered by Google Cloud. We’ve successfully implemented applications leveraging MongoDB Atlas on Google Cloud, building upon MongoDB’s flexible JSON-like data model, rich querying and indexing, and elastic scalability in conjunction with Google Cloud’s class-leading cloud infrastructure, data analytics, and machine learning capabilities. HCL is working with some of the world’s largest enterprises in building secure, performant, and cost-effective solutions with MongoDB and Google.

Possessing technical expertise in Google Cloud, MongoDB, machine learning, and data science, our dedicated team developed a reference architecture that ensures high performance and scalability. This is simplified by MongoDB Atlas’ support for Google Cloud services which allows it to essentially operate as a cloud-native solution. Highlighted features include:

Integration with Google Cloud Key Management Service
Use of Google Cloud’s native storage snapshot for fast backup and restore
Ability to create read-only MongoDB nodes in Google Cloud to reduce latency with Google Cloud-native services regardless of where the primary node is located (even other public cloud providers!)
Integrated billing with Google Cloud
Ability to span a single MongoDB cluster across Google Cloud regions worldwide, and more

As represented in Figure 1 below, MongoDB Atlas on Google Cloud can be used as a single database solution for transactional, operational, and analytical workloads across a variety of use cases.

Diagram of MongoDB's core characteristics and features — *Figure 1: MongoDB's core characteristics and features*

The following architecture in Figure 2 demonstrates the ease of reading and writing data to MongoDB from Google Cloud services.

Dataflow, Cloud Data Fusion, and Dataproc can be leveraged to build data pipelines to migrate data from heterogeneous databases to MongoDB and to feed data to create interactive dashboards using Looker. These data pipelines support both batch and real-time ingestion workloads and can be automated and orchestrated using Google Cloud - native services..

Diagram of how MongoDB Atlas integrates with core Google Cloud services — *Figure 2: MongoDB Atlas' integration with core Google Cloud services*

A data platform built using MongoDB Atlas and Google Cloud offers an integrated suite of services for storage, analysis, and visualization.

Address your business challenges with HCL: Industry use cases

Data-driven solutions built with MongoDB Atlas on Google Cloud have multiple applications across industries such as financial services, media and entertainment, healthcare, oil and gas, energy, manufacturing, retail, and the public sector. Every industry can benefit from this highly integrated storage and analytical solution.

Use Cases and Benefits

Data lake modernization with low cost and high availability for media and entertainment customers: Maintaining high availability and a low-cost data lake is an obstacle for any online entertainment platform that builds mobile or web ticketing applications. However, building on Google App Engine with MongoDB Atlas Clusters in the backend allows for a high-availability, low-cost data platform that seamlessly feeds data to downstream analytics platforms in real time.
Unified data platform for retail customers: The retail business frequently requests an agile environment in order to encourage innovation among its engineers. With its agility in scaling and resource management, seamless multi-region clusters, and premium monitoring, running MongoDB Atlas on Google Cloud is a fantastic choice for building a single data platform. This simplifies the management of different data platforms and allows developers to focus on new ideas.
High-speed real-time data platform of supply chain system for manufacturing units: By having real-time visibility and distributed data services, supply chain data can become a competitive advantage. MongoDB Atlas on Google Cloud provides a solid foundation for creating distributed data services with a unified, easy-to-maintain architecture. The unrivaled speed of MongoDB Atlas simplifies supply chain operations with real-time data analytics.

The way forward

Even in just the past decade, organizations have been forced to adapt to the extremely fast pace of innovation in the data analytics landscape: moving from batch to real-time, on-premise to cloud, gigabytes to petabytes, and the increased accessibility of advanced AI/ML models thanks to providers like Google Cloud. With our track record of success in this domain, HCL Technologies is uniquely positioned to help organizations realize the joint benefits of building data analytics applications with best-of-breed solutions from Google Cloud and MongoDB.

Visit us to learn more about the HCL Google Ecosystem Business Unit and how we can help you harness the power of MongoDB Atlas and Google Cloud Platform to change the way you store and analyze your data through these solutions.

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Retail Tech in 2022: Predictions for What's on the Horizon

If 2020 and 2021 were all about adjusting to the Covid-19 pandemic, 2022 will be about finding a way to be successful in this “new normal”. So what should retailers expect in the upcoming year, and where should you consider making new retail technology investments? Omnichannel is still going strong Who would have anticipated the Covid-19 pandemic would still be disrupting lives after two years? For the retail industry this means more of the same - omnichannel shopping. Despite the hope many of us had for the end of the pandemic and the gradual increase of in-person shopping, retail workers can expect to continue accommodating all kinds of shopping experiences – online shopping, brick and mortar shopping, buy online and pick up in store, reserve online and pick up in store. Even beyond the pandemic, the face of shopping is likely forever changed. This means retailers need to start considering the long-term tech investments required to meet transforming customer expectations. Adopting solutions that offer a single view of the consumer gives you the unique opportunity to personalize offerings, products and loyalty programs to their demand. With a superior consumer experience, you can achieve repeat business and increased customer loyalty. While many retailers may have thought they could “get by” with their current solutions until the pandemic ends, it’s time to rethink that approach and start exploring more long-term solutions to improve omnichannel shopping experiences. Leaner tech stacks over many specialized solutions In 2022, you should explore solutions that allow your IT teams to do more with less. The typical retail tech stack looks something like the diagram below. Legacy, relational databases are supplemented by other specialist NoSQL and relational databases, and additional mobile data and analytics platforms. As a result, retailers looking to respond quickly to changing consumer preferences and improve the customer experience face an uphill battle against siloed data, slow data processing, and unnecessary complexity. Your development teams are so busy cobbling solutions together and maintaining different technologies at once that they fail to innovate to their full potential, so you’re never quite able to pull ahead of the competition. This is the data innovation recurring tax (or DIRT) . Think of this as the ongoing tax on innovation that spaghetti architectures, like the example above, legacy architecture costs your business. As technology grows more sophisticated and data grows more complex, companies are expected to react almost instantaneously to signals from their data. Legacy technologies, like relational databases, are rigid, inefficient, and hard to adapt, making it difficult to deliver true innovation to your customers and employees in a timely manner. Your development teams are so busy cobbling solutions together that they fail to innovate to their full potential, so you’re never quite able to pull ahead of the competition. It’s time to rethink your legacy systems, and adopt solutions that streamline operations and seamlessly share data to ensure you’re working with a single source of data truth. Many retailers recognize the need to upgrade legacy solutions and get away from multiple different database technologies, but you may not know where to start. Look for modern data applications that simplify data collection from disparate sources and include automated conflict resolution for added data reliability. Also, consider what you could do with fully managed data platforms, like MongoDB Atlas . With someone else doing the admin work, your developers are free to focus on critical work or turn their talents to innovation. Digital worker enablement will increase retention For employees, 2022 looks set to continue last year’s trend of the “ Great Resignation ”. To combat worker fatigue, and retain your workforce you need to prioritize worker engagement. One way to better engage your employees is through mobile workforce enablement. While many companies consider how to engage their customers with a more digital-friendly work environment, you shouldn’t forget about your workers in the process. Global companies like Walmart are starting to invest in mobile apps to enable their workforce. A modern, always-on retail workforce enablement app could transform the way your employees do their jobs. Features like real-time view of stock, cross-departmental collaboration, detailed product information, instant communication with other stores can simplify your workers’ experiences and help them to better serve your customers. Your workers need an always-on app that syncs with your single source of data truth, regardless of connectivity (which may be an issue as retail workers are constantly on the move). But building a mobile app with data sync capabilities can be a costly and time-intensive investment. MongoDB Realm Sync solves for this with an intuitive, object-oriented data model that is simple to use, and an out-of-the-box data synchronization service. When your mobile data seamlessly integrates with back-end systems, you can deliver a modern, distributed data platform to your workers. Huge investment in the supply chain From microchips to toilet paper, disruptions in the supply chain were a huge issue in 2020 and 2021, and the supply chain pain continues in 2022. And while there continue to be supply chain issues beyond the control of retailers, there are steps that can be taken to mitigate some of the pain and prepare for future disruptions. Warehouse tech is getting smarter, and you need to upgrade your solutions to keep up. For starters, consider adopting the right data platform to unify siloed data and gain a single view of operations . A single view of your data will allow for better management of store-level demand forecasts, distribution center-to-store network optimizations, vendor ordering, truck load optimizations, and much more. With a modern data platform, all this data feeds into one, single view application, giving retailers the insights to react to supply chain issues in real time. With disruption set to dominate 2022, as it did in 2020 and 2021, investing in proactive solution upgrades could help your business not only survive, but thrive. Want to learn more about gaining a competitive advantage in the retail industry? Get this free white paper on retail modernization .

January 13, 2022

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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.

November 19, 2024