Versant Corporation, a worldwide leader in developing data management software infrastructure for complex, mission-critical applications,today announced the free, pre-release version of Versant JPA for the Cloud, a pure, cloud-based Java client for the Versant Object Database (VOD) certified for use on the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). With this new Java-based API on EC2, enterprise development teams can leverage existing programming skills and the cloud’s inherent ability to quickly scale infrastructure up and down to address the volume, variety, and velocity demands of complex Big Data.

With industry research firm IDC’s estimate that the market for Big Data technology will grow seven times faster than the overall information technology and communications business over the next three years, Big Data is clearly a top priority for businesses of all kinds. Additionally, London-based research firm Visiongain predicts that the cloud computing market will continue to see strong growth, reaching a global industry value of $37.9 billion by 2017. Enterprises who are able to leverage both technologies for the combined benefits of lower-cost infrastructure and more valuable, data-driven applications will gain a significant advantage.

But while adopting cloud infrastructures and applications through platforms like Amazon’s EC2 has become easier than ever, effectively leveraging new NoSQL technologies to manage Big Data still presents significant time and financial burdens as programmers must learn proprietary new coding languages. With Versant JPA for the Cloud on Amazon EC2, Versant is continuing its strategy of lowering the barriers frequently presented by NoSQL adoption, letting organizations leverage the cloud through the use of accepted Java persistence industry standards to radically shorten development ramp-up cycles, and avoid overhead when resources aren’t needed.

“Even with simple Big Data models, it takes time to provision new hardware and software to create the right infrastructure. If NoSQL database technologies are part of that infrastructure, developers typically must learn new coding skills for each solution,” said Vishal Bagga, Product Manager, Versant. “With more complex Big Data models, for example in large network management systems where new device types are continually added, these challenges are magnified. Versant JPA for the Cloud clears all three of these hurdles: developers get cloud’s on-demand accessibility, Java’s ease of use and portability, and NoSQL’s performance and scalability.”

Versant JPA and the NoSQL Versant Object Database offer the highest performance solution for enterprises to handle large, complex data using Java standards-based coding skills. When compared to other NoSQL and MySQL databases and key/value stores using the open source PolePosition database benchmarking process, VOD performed up to 1000 percent faster when simultaneously processing ten data threads in 60,000 millisecond cycles.

Versant welcomes early adopters to try the free, pre-release version of Versant JPA for the Cloud to help your programming team rapidly achieve its complex Big Data challenges. Versant has certified its Versant JPA product for developers on Amazon EC2, and will provide an accompanying guide to help developers quickly install and configure the product.

For more information, or to try the pre-release version of Versant JPA for the Cloud, visit the Versant team at GigaOM Structure 2012 in San Francisco, CA, June 20-22, 2012, contact Versant at info@versant.com, or visit the Versant online developer community at http://community.versant.com.