9 Questions to Better Understand OceanBase’s Cloud Database: OceanBase Dedicated

With continuous advancements in cloud computing and AI, cloud databases are rapidly becoming the preferred data management solution for enterprises. Their high availability, scalability, and ease of maintenance are accelerating digital transformation for businesses.

In 2022, OceanBase launched its cloud database, OceanBase Dedicated. In two years, OceanBase Dedicated has served over 700 customers, achieving a 130% year-on-year increase in customer numbers. The maximum capacity of a single OceanBase cluster has exceeded 1.2PB, meeting the full lifecycle business needs of companies from startup to maturity. Moreover, OceanBase Dedicated is offering services in over 30 geographic regions worldwide, spanning more than 100 availability zones across the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Notable clients include e-wallet companies such as DANA, PalmPay, and GCash.

OceanBase Dedicated has also been recognized by Gartner®, with an Honorable Mention in the 2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Cloud Database Management Systems, a distinction received by only 10 companies worldwide, and an “Asia/Pacific Customers' Choice” and a “Strong Performer” in the Gartner® Peer Insights™ Voice of the Customer for Cloud Database Management System. In 2024, OceanBase was named a Challenger by Forrester in its report "The Forrester Wave™: Translytical Data Platforms, Q4 2024".

Many clients choose OceanBase Dedicated for its ability to handle high concurrency, ensure service continuity, provide real-time analytics, and enable seamless migration to the cloud. As an independent software vendor, OceanBase offers integrated products and can be deployed on multi-cloud infrastructure, allowing clients to experience consistent service across different cloud platforms. OceanBase Dedicated now seamlessly integrates with leading public cloud providers, including AWS, Google Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, etc.

In this article, we've compiled 9 frequently asked questions and their answers to provide a comprehensive understanding of OceanBase Dedicated. This will help you grasp how it facilitates flexible data management, cost reduction, and improved efficiency, along with insights into the technical strengths and business strategies behind the product.

Q1: Are the performance and capabilities of OceanBase Dedicated and on-premises OceanBase Database the same, apart from the different deployment methods?

🎙️ A: The core of OceanBase Dedicated is consistent with on-premises OceanBase Database, and the capabilities, performance, and features are the same for both. However, since OceanBase Dedicated’s deployment and backend maintenance are managed directly by the OceanBase team, updates to features and technology are generally faster for OceanBase Dedicated than those deployed within customers' on-premises data centers (IDC). Once customer usage, scenarios, instances, and clusters accumulate to a certain threshold in the latest version, we gradually deliver those updates to on-premises databases. In short, the two versions will eventually converge, but OceanBase Dedicated will progress slightly faster.

Q2: Has there been a shift in cloud database deployment? Is multi-cloud deployment a mainstream requirement among customers?

🎙️ A: Multi-cloud infrastructure is becoming a common demand. Here are two examples:

First, cross-border clients. For domestic operations, clients often choose one of the major domestic cloud providers. However, clients tend to select the leading local cloud providers for overseas business to meet data privacy concerns and local compliance requirements. Such an arrangement creates a multi-cloud setup.

Second, clients with high business continuity requirements are looking to enhance resilience and, therefore, adopt active-active multi-cloud deployment.

For OceanBase Dedicated customers, OceanBase provides consistent service regardless of the cloud they deploy on, ensuring interoperability with uniform versions and experience.

Many clients using OceanBase Dedicated unify their database infrastructure across multiple clouds, increasing their version iteration and release efficiency by several times. Some use OceanBase Dedicated’s multi-cloud capabilities for disaster recovery, allowing for seamless, data-loss-free failover to another cloud’s availability zone in a few seconds in case of an outage.

Q3: OceanBase has emphasized its integrated features over recent years, aiming to meet 80% of customers' needs with a single database. What does integration mean in this context?

🎙️ A: Integration mainly involves three dimensions:

First is business-based integration. With a stand-alone and distributed integrated architecture, OceanBase supports customers of different business phases. Startups can use a stand-alone deployment, while fast-growing companies can transition to a distributed architecture.

Second, scenario-based integration. With HTAP and multi-model capabilities, OceanBase supports transaction processing (TP), analytical processing (AP), as well as document storage and more.

Third, infrastructure-based integration. Traditional companies initially relied on IDCs, gradually adopting hybrid cloud and eventually full cloud solutions. Startups may choose a cloud-native architecture. Some companies want unified management of underlying infrastructure through hybrid clouds. Regardless of the demands, we help customers achieve infrastructure integration.

Q4: What industries are more inclined to adopt cloud databases, and what are the common characteristics of cloud database customers?

🎙️ A: First, the largest group is cloud-native customers - companies that deployed their infrastructure in the cloud from day one, especially internet companies. These companies have the highest level of cloud adoption.

Second, traditional payment and internet finance companies. For domestic operations, these companies mostly rely on on-premises IDCs. However, local on-premises deployment is often not feasible for cross-border payments and regional payment services, such as in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, North America, Mexico, and South America, due to high IDC rental costs over a long duration. As a result, most overseas infrastructure is cloud-based.

Third, traditional manufacturing and retail sectors. These clients seek advanced cloud capabilities. AI, LLMs, and data analysis are difficult to implement in private clouds, as building a complete AI model or data analysis system is costly. In such cases, these clients turn to cloud solutions.

Q5: Is OceanBase Dedicated aimed at industries with high distributed database demands, or does it appeal to smaller companies with more basic database requirements equally?

🎙️ A: OceanBase was initially developed for Alibaba’s Alipay and Taobao to handle major sales events, so its focus was the distributed architecture. This also led to OceanBase breaking TPC-C and TPC-H benchmark records.

However, we recognized that OceanBase's underlying LSM-Tree engine is also capable of stand-alone deployment. This led us to introduce the stand-alone and distributed integrated architecture, providing stand-alone deployment options and primary-standby configurations.

This approach enables clients to use OceanBase through all business stages - from startup to growth and even to platform level - without switching between stand-alone databases, sharding, or distributed systems. OceanBase can support a company’s entire lifecycle.

In addition to full lifecycle support, OceanBase is versatile for different scenarios. Large and small businesses have varying needs, from transactional to analytical, often requiring separate data storage and computing solutions. Our HTAP, AP, multi-model capabilities, document storage, and stand-alone and distributed integrated architecture help businesses avoid complexity when managing diverse data storage and computing needs.

Q6: Given that distributed databases are the future, is the stand-alone and distributed integrated architecture a transitional phase?

🎙️ A: This model isn’t transitional; it’s designed to meet client needs at different growth stages. Clients that started with basic, counter-style systems and then scaled up to platforms facing rapid data growth benefit from distributed processing and storage during their internet, mobile, and digital transformation stages.

However, for startups still building their user base, distributed systems are often unnecessary early on, so a stand-alone setup effectively meets their needs.

Whether a stand-alone or distributed architecture is used depends on where the client is in their growth cycle.

Q7: Some clients are modernizing existing systems, while others are rebuilding. How does OceanBase support both needs?

🎙️ A: For clients migrating to OceanBase, we ensure high compatibility with popular databases like MySQL, providing complete migration paths that minimize disruption. We've already supported over 700 clients, making our migration process highly productized and replicable, so much so that clients can often handle migration independently.

For example, some clients independently manage the migration process, from compatibility checks to capacity assessments, data migration, dual operations, and ultimately decommissioning the old database. This entire process can take as little as 20 days - about a week per stage, with the old database as a backup before being taken offline.

For clients building new systems, we work closely with industry partners, solution providers and system developers. Additionally, OceanBase’s community often attracts clients who are setting up new business systems and looking to leverage OceanBase’s HTAP, multi-model, and vector capabilities.

Q8: As we witness OceanBase Dedicated’s global expansion, what attracts global clients to OceanBase Dedicated?

🎙️ A: For domestic companies expanding internationally - like electric vehicles and consumer electronics manufacturers - having local data nodes is essential to meet business and regulatory requirements across regions like the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. OceanBase Dedicated’s multi-cloud infrastructure simplifies data management across borders, making these companies a crucial part of our globalization.

International clients, particularly in retail and fintech, are drawn to OceanBase for its technical advantages, for example, the e-wallet services in Southeast Asia and Africa.

Q9: What is the future development strategy for OceanBase Dedicated?

🎙️ A: OceanBase Dedicated’s future strategy will focus on four main areas:

1. Strengthening integrated product features on cloud to meet broader business needs with enhanced TP, AP, KV, and AI functions that help clients streamline their tech stacks and optimize costs.

2. Expanding the cloud ecosystem with broader compatibility for different cloud providers, covering more countries and regions to support multi-cloud requirements. We’re also accelerating product compatibility with leading independent vendors and cloud vendors for multi-cloud-native integration, aiming for seamless tech stack fusion across clouds.

3. Improving cloud security to support global compliance standards.

4. Enhancing usability and manageability on the cloud to lower usage and operational barriers for businesses.