Ant Financial Introduces OceanBase SaaS

China-based Ant Financial has introduced a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) version of its popular financial relational database software, OceanBase, according to a press release.

OceanBase has been an important computing product for online payment service Alipay (which Ant Financial operates) since 2010.

“OceanBase is highly stable, scalable, reliable and budget-friendly compared to other traditional database solutions. In October 2019, OceanBase was ranked number one in terms of performance by the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC), a global non-profit that defines transaction processing and database benchmarks,” the release said.

Ant Financial is a member of the Alibaba Group, a Chinese tech company that specializes in retail, eCommerce, internet and technology. Alibaba’s growth and sheer volume of transactions made Ant Financial realize that commercial database solutions on the market wouldn’t be able to handle what the company needed to provide users with a “seamless, stable, scalable, and reliable” payment infrastructure on Alipay.

That’s why the company started developing OceanBase.

Alibaba’s gross merchandise volume (GMV) during its 2019 11.11 Global Shopping Festival (also known as Singles Day) reached $38.4 billion in a day. That amount was more than the $24.6 billion generated in the U.S. during the holiday season. OceanBase was able to handle everything smoothly, the release said, even when transactions peaked at 61 million a second.

“In September 2018, Ant Financial announced an initiative to open up a full suite of its technology products to support the growth of financial institutions, including helping them to optimize the user experience and reduce costs,” the release said. “Since then, various major financial institutions, such as China Construction Bank, Bank of Nanjing, PICC Health, Bank of Suzhou and Guangdong Rural Credit Union, have deployed the OceanBase database solution. OceanBase has helped to improve their database query capabilities, support broader business operations and significantly reduce software and hardware costs.”

Ant Financial said the SaaS version of OceanBase is the marking of a new milestone for the company, and it will allow for a more “flexible and cost-effective” option for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), allowing them computing capabilities that they wouldn’t otherwise have access to.