Lily is a next-generation, NoSQL-backed content repository based on the fusion of Apache HBase and SOLR, combined with years of content management experience with Daisy.
The design of Lily is being guided by a couple of key findings and axiomata, which will allow us to maximize impact while still taking on a realistic project path. We seek such impact through subject relevancy and technological innovation, as these are the core competences of our organization.
Google, Facebook, Amazon, Digg and other vested web properties didn’t turn to classic enterprise technology (such as RDBMs) to address their non-classical challenges of availability and scalability. Instead, they turned towards the core of the problem, and invented novel theories, concepts and solutions to cope with their enormous growth and subsequent demand. These solutions are now becoming available in the software commons, such as column-oriented databases, messaging queues and highly scalable infrastructure management tools. Many of these tools, while admittedly still young and under constant testing and evolution are being contributed to open source collaboration platforms such as Apache which allows anyone to benefit from the innovation within. After careful consideration we made a selection – Apache HBase – that will serve as the base foundation of Lily. Most importantly, the tool we selected will address scalability and availability at the core of our product design, while still allowing us to deliver a product that can be installed on customer infrastructure. With this new underlying technology, scale will no longer be a challenge, but become a welcomed product opportunity.
We discern two successful types of ‘cloud’ services: low-level provisioning of virtualized computing capacity (e.g. Amazon EC2) or storage (Amazon S3 and others), and high-end SaaS services allowing customers to access semi-private or multi-tenant instances of specific vertical end-user applications (e.g. Salesforce.com).
Beyond server and storage instances, we believe there is an opportunity for higher-level solutions providing sophisticated content services, combining scalable store with scalable search, whilst providing higher-level content models that can be used inside more sophisticated applications such as large-scale document archiving, library management, media asset management and the like. Market research shows us that few – if any – software producers are currently working on the combination of scalable store and search based on novel cloud-capable datastore technologies.
Commoditization is ‘moving up the stack’, and buyers are increasingly often looking for cloud-capable offerings with higher added value than pure compute and/or store. Lily will become the first cloud-based content application platform, embracing rather than coping with scale, while providing the required level of genericity to support a wide range of vertically-oriented content applications.
The roadmap of Lily consists of two phases.
At first, we will appeal to technologists and platform builders with a scalable store and search solution (the Lily content repository) that can be used as-is as a content repository or be part of a larger application architecture requiring content services.
Next, we will create a library of architecture patterns and application components allowing us and partners to set up end-user-facing content verticals running on the Lily platform, addressing time-to-market and intelligent component re-use. These verticals will be topically or industry-oriented – such as pharma, health-care, biotech, e-government and media.
This second step allows us to set up intelligent partnerships with vertically-specialized integrators, consultancies or operational service providers, in which we can play our strength at solution engineering and partners can benefit from operational revenue sharing.
Content verticals we will initially be focusing on will be archival, e-government, biotech/pharma and media asset management.
Lily will jump ahead of the curve: by fostering innovation we will be able to differentiate and position our next-generation content application platform as a suitable choice for both solution architects and content vertical providers.
Lily will be the first content solution embracing scale with NoSQL technology while learning from a successful past. It will combine high availability and scalability for storage and search with the sophisticated repository model Daisy is already known for, supporting our customers’ growth ambitions and preserving their intellectual assets for the future.