This research project will focus on sorting out information about the market trends, cutting-edge technologies, enterprise needs, and competitive situations of distributed databases in various financial institutions such as banks, insurance companies, and securities firms. It will also make speculations or predictions about the future development prospects of the market.
China's financial-grade distributed databases are in a mature implementation phase and growing market, with competing entities being divided into tiers based on their performance across six dimensions: product functionality, architecture design, operations and security, openness and autonomy, services and customer relationships, and best practices. Frost & Sullivan and LeadLeo have screened out 11 Chinese database vendors that provide distributed databases and derivative services to financial institutions including banks, insurance companies, securities firms, exchanges, and clearing houses. They recommend vendors selected for this report to the readers.
The analysis conclusions on the comprehensive competitiveness of financial-grade distributed database products and services by competing entities in this report are only applicable to the current development of the financial-grade distributed database market at that stage. Frost & Sullivan will continue to monitor the financial-grade database market and keep abreast of competitive trends.
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Background of the Financial-grade Distributed Database Report Project
As mentioned in the version released last year of this report, the financial sector has differences and more stringent requirements compared to other sectors in terms of application scenarios, technical conditions, and key demands. Not only do they need to cope with massive, high-concurrency, and low-latency business needs in a data environment with huge user and transaction volumes, but each transaction must also meet the necessary conditions of strong consistency, business continuity, and data security compliance. After these fully necessary requirements are met, financial customers may further demand that database usage and operations provide highly elastic and low-cost solutions.
The concept of distributed databases was still an uncertain direction for the database market development before 2019. Chinese database vendors were just emerging, and end-users in the industry remained on the sidelines. In the past three years, with the implementation verification and application deepening of distributed database products and services by various vendors in key fields such as finance, decision-makers in other industries began to believe that distributed database products could run smoothly in their own business systems even when demand for financial services was lower. This gave distributed databases the opportunity to move from finance to a full implementation across various industry scenarios.
In the current database industry where bloom, users are facing hotspots and complex promotions regarding distributed architectures. Customer cases in the financial sector serve as proof of the 'steel' tempering and quenching effect of this technology. Financial-grade distributed databases are a benchmark for database vendors to move their technology and services from 'advanced' to 'mature'.
Therefore, Frost & Sullivan has separately decomposed financial-grade distributed databases into a separate market report topic for long-term tracking and updates in the distributed database market research area.
The financial industry has carried out explorations into the future development of distributed databases around four key buzzwords: 'service', 'digitalization', 'innovation', and 'cooperation'.
In the news media, China's financial industry pays close attention to the product R&D trends and technological transformation topics related to distributed databases. Database vendors continue to prioritize the advancement of products and functional features in response to the needs of financial clients.
The discussion on distributed databases in the financial industry has advanced to the stage of expanding applications. 'How can distributed databases empower business digital transformation?' and 'What changes will distributed databases bring to enterprise operation management?' have become frequent questions.
The financial industry has explored the future development of distributed databases around four key hot words: 'service', 'digitalization', 'innovation', and 'cooperation'. Distributed databases have gradually become one of the recognized development trends in basic software within the industry.
The integration of production, finance, research, and application in distributed databases
The financial industry differs from traditional and other industries in that financial enterprises have long-term business system inertia towards using databases, advanced customization of technology expertise, and high-level 'equal protection' requirements. Database vendors cannot fully penetrate to meet the needs of financial enterprises due to their focus on banking requirements, nor can they provide long-term on-site operational support after delivery.
Frost & Sullivan believes that financial-grade distributed database innovation has formed a new model of 'production-gold-research-application': the database industry, based on the needs of financial clients, chooses to cooperate with universities for early layout and research and development, with fintech companies for joint research and development, or to develop independently. Database vendors then undertake the industrialization of technical requirements, while financial institutions purchase distributed databases and their own R&D teams handle the switching and deployment of distributed databases into existing systems.
China's financial-grade distributed databases are in a mature and rapidly growing market phase. Competitors will be divided into tiers based on their performance in six dimensions: product features, architecture design, operations and security, openness and autonomy, services and customer relationships, and best practices.
Frost & Sullivan has screened out 11 competing Chinese database vendors that provide distributed databases and derivative services to financial institutions including banks, insurance companies, securities firms, exchanges, and clearing houses. These vendors are recommended to readers who are interested in this report.
The analysis conclusions on the comprehensive competitiveness of financial-grade distributed database products and services by competing entities in this report are only applicable to the current development of the financial-grade distributed database market at that stage. Frost & Sullivan will continue to monitor the financial-grade database market and keep abreast of competitive trends.
Frost & Sullivan, in collaboration with LeadLeo, conducts a multi-factor hierarchical assessment of the competitiveness of China's financial-grade distributed database market based on twenty-eight major indicators across six evaluation dimensions: product functionality, architecture design, operations and security, ecosystem construction, services and market, business scenario best practices. These include transactional scenario capabilities, analytical scenario capabilities, distributed architecture design, scalability features, operational optimization capabilities, database disaster recovery construction, migration adaptation and transformation, sustainable technical development, standardized product documentation, financial customer volume and stickiness, and best practices for core businesses.
Based on the comprehensive scoring of Frost Vendor ScoreCask, Frost & Sullivan recommends eleven database vendors and their financial-grade database products for the financial-grade database market, including GoldenDB from Jinzhenxinke, GaussDB from Huawei Cloud, TDSQL from Tencent Cloud, OceanBase from Aoxing Base, TiDB from Pingkai Xingchen, etc., to meet the ultimate requirements of the financial industry and empower domestic substitution or new core construction of various business systems for financial customers.
Top 5 Manufacturers by Comprehensive Score
GoldenDB:GoldenDB achieves strong consistency by utilizing the globally unique serial number GTID managed by the Global Transaction Manager (GTM) and committed transaction rollback. It adopts one-phase commit (1PC) for performance release. As a database with banking expertise, it deeply understands and specializes in various database replacement needs of bank customers. It is developed specifically for financial special needs, oriented towards standard SQL syntax, 100% compatible with MySQL, and highly compatible with Oracle and DB2 with over 90%. More than 95% of the code is self-developed. GoldenDB provides standard cloud-native capabilities, supports storage and computing separation, offers linear scalability potential, and provides large-scale operation and maintenance capabilities as well as high availability management through the cloud-based PaaS platform Insight. GoldenDB has completed scenario coverage from core banking systems to OA office peripheral systems, moving from the production verification stage to the mature commercialization stage of efficient and rapid delivery.
Huawei Cloud GaussDB:GaussDB provides full-stack software and hardware deep collaboration advantages, fully unleashing the performance potential of Kunpeng multi-core and cross-NUMA memory. With a 90% self-developed code rate, it has deeply transformed its storage engine to launch UStore, which is already commercially used by financial clients and supports real-time or near-real-time enterprise-level hybrid loads. It offers cloud-native fine-grained scalability and low cost based on high-precision encryption. It ensures full lifecycle data security through full-state-of-security encryption. AI-native Ops optimization provides database autonomy features. GaussDB continues to invest in research and development, attaches great importance to documentation construction projects, and leads the industry in terms of both patents and papers. With the support of the open-source Gauss ecosystem, it aims to build long-term technical sustainability.
Tencent Cloud TDSQL:TDSQL has chosen a parallel development strategy for MySQL and PGSQL, providing various product output forms such as public cloud, private cloud TCE, and cloud-native solutions to meet customers' diverse technical stack selection needs. TDSQL offers a complete and mature set of operation and maintenance tools through the YunTu visualization platform, Chitu Ops console, Bian Que diagnostic analysis platform, and DBbrain database intelligent assistant, bringing high-tech benefits in database autonomy to customers. Based on the MySQL protocol, TDSQL has launched the new sensitive-state row storage engine TDStore, which integrates with the columnar storage engine LibraDB to provide HTAP capabilities and has begun preliminary commercial use. TDSQL's dual-path development route can not only meet the core requirements of large financial institutions' unitized architecture systems for extreme stability and scalability but also satisfy the core requirements of small and medium-sized financial institutions' microservice applications and distributed architecture systems for extreme compatibility and ease of use.
OceanBase:OceanBase 4.0 truly supports single-machine distributed integration, providing a smoother upgrade path for the construction of new core systems and meeting the technological financial development needs of small and medium-sized institutions such as rural commercial banks. OceanBase ensures data consistency in all aspects through the Paxos protocol, chain-based verification against tampering, and proactive verification against silent disk errors; combined with a full-link activation mechanism, it ensures continuous high availability with RTO < 8 seconds. Oriented towards finance, OceanBase is 100% self-developed, with the Mulan open-source protocol being independently controllable. The NewSQL architecture combines resource pooling for cloud-native fine-grained resource management and provides financial-grade capabilities for enterprise-level users across all industries.
Pingkai Xingchen TiDB:TiDB is a leading product in China's self-developed open-source route, with a complete ecosystem built in terms of documentation, education, and technical evangelism. Based on the NewSQL architecture, TiDB prioritizes full compatibility with MySQL; by integrating two engines—columnar TiKV and row-based TiFlash—TiDB supports dual-engine isolated HTAP capabilities for real-time data visibility, aiding in financial data insights. TiDB embraces open-source and cloud technologies, supporting various deployment modes such as financial private clouds and hybrid clouds, providing cloud-based HTAP capabilities to financial customers to meet the needs of various financial digital scenarios.
