GridGain Systems has upgraded its namesake Java-based open source middleware platform for real-time Big Data processing.

Unlike complex, decade-old SQL, ERP or Hadoop ETL systems that use dead data for batch offline processing, the new GridGain 4.0 will process live data so businesses can get meaningful results faster from low-latency real-time transactional and analytical processing.

By comparison GridGain CEO Nikita Ivanov claims Hadoop is only good for long-term historical storage. GridGain is more like "Big Data 2.0."

Anyway, the widgetry has added:

• Big Data Anywhere capabilities with native lightweight clients for Java, .NET, Python, PHP and C++ as well as native clients for the two largest mobility platforms, iOS and Android.
• Native language support for Java, Scala and Groovy programming languages.
• A Monitoring and Management Console for large-scale grid topologies with both a scriptable command-line-based interface and a GUI-based console.
• GridGain CloudBoot to deploy and provision GridGain in public cloud deployments, easing deployments for OpenStack, Amazon EC2 and Microsoft Azure.
• Enterprise-grade security with a comprehensive security model for node discovery and grid clients. It also includes passcode-based security, JAAS-based security and secure session support.

GridGain 4 is supposed to discover over 1,000 network nodes in cloud environments, preventing cluster and data inconsistencies; load data from sources such as Hadoop HDFS; and swap the memory available on the grid to a swap space so it can store more data in virtual memory.

The GridGain Big Data platform is available as a free open source Community Edition licensed under GPL 3 and a paid Enterprise Edition or OEM Edition, both of which include advanced features as well as enterprise grade support and maintenance.

According to Gartner VP Merv Adrian, "Velocity is an essential, but often overlooked component of Big Data. Just like data itself, the importance of the speed at which companies can ingest data will continue to increase, but it will do so at an unpredictable and variable rate. Those companies that are able to utilize the data they collect in real-time will be able to develop competitive advantages. Those that can't will discover they aren't able to meet their SLAs."

Ivanov contends that "Once data is batched, it's dead and there's no way to bring it back to life. If a system isn't processing live data, it isn't delivering Big Data in real-time. There's no point in having the right information too late. Given the global 24-hour work cycle that now exists, companies want and need to be able to take action on data fast."

The start-up got $2.5 million in funding at the end of last year from RTP Ventures and will be looking for $7 million-$10 million by the end of this year. Reportedly Sony (for games) and Thomson Reuters (for financial data) are using the year-old Enterprise kit. Now at 15 people, GridGain wants to build out telesales and marketing.