DEMO: FathomDB launches a database that scales in the cloud

FathomDB is one of 65 companies chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Spring 2010 event taking place this week. These companies do pay a fee to present, but our coverage of them remains objective.

A startup called FathomDB is launching a new product today that represents the next step in its efforts to run your company’s database on cloud computing infrastructure.

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San Francisco-based FathomDB already allows companies to store their database on Amazon’s or Rackspace’s servers, so that you don’t have to worry about the hardware, while storing and accessing your data using the common MySQL interface.

Today it’s unveiling its own proprietary database technology, which offers the benefits of the current MySQL database while also taking advantage of the cloud-computing infrastructure to scale up and down as needed. That includes growing the database across multiple machines, allowing companies to store amounts of data that weren’t really achievable in a relational database without expensive hardware from Oracle.

Those kinds of scaling capabilities are why some companies are putting up with the drawbacks of NoSQL technology, a sort of anti-database design philosophy for Web software which FathomDB founder Justin Santa Barbara said is “in fashion today but passe tomorrow.” Meanwhile, he said FathomDB is now giving you those abilities with the relational database technology that companies are used to.

Details like pricing are still being worked out, but Santa Barbara said FathomDB is currently looking for pilot customers. This might be particularly useful for startups who want to get big quickly and hope to see the classic “hockey stick” of growth that web startups dream about, but which can be a real strain on your infrastructure if you’re not ready for it.

FathomDB was incubated by Y Combinator, and plans to raise a first institutional round of venture funding later this year. Its existing MySQL database in the cloud service has seen “hundreds” of sign-ups, Santa Barbara said.