10 years of MongoDB customers at AWS re:Invent

Matt Asay

#AWS re:Invent

MongoDB has attended AWS re:Invent since its inception in 2012. A key reason for this is, of course, to help strengthen our partnership with AWS, which really began in 2015 and significantly expanded in March 2022 with a global, strategic collaboration agreement. But an even more fundamental reason for MongoDB's continued presence at AWS re:Invent over the years is the opportunity to engage with our many joint customers.

Several MongoDB customers have been featured in re:Invent keynotes over the years. In fact, looking back at the customers AWS chose to feature in its keynotes, it's hard to find examples that are not MongoDB customers. Earlier this year, AWS celebrated 10 years of re:Invent by showcasing an equal number of "memorable customer moments" from the re:Invent mainstage. It was a great way to reaffirm AWS Leadership Principle #1 (Customer Obsession). It was also a great way to shine a light on the great things MongoDB's customers are doing.

Rather than rewind on the many MongoDB customers spotlighted at re:Invent, let's look at those AWS called "most memorable" in its blog.

All in on cloud

Back in 2015, Capital One CIO Rob Alexander took to the re:Invent stage to discuss Capital One's "all in" approach to cloud. "We’re either using or experimenting with nearly every AWS service," Alexander said. What he didn't say, but which the company has been quite public about over the years, was how Capital One uses MongoDB in tandem with AWS services.

A few months after Alexander's re:Invent comments, Capital One's Oron Gill Haus spoke at MongoDB World on Hygieia, the company's open source DevOps dashboard. Hygieia, built on MongoDB, provides the foundation for the company's attempts to reimagine banking. Haus detailed why MongoDB is so critical to Capital One's need to innovate quickly on customers' behalf, stressing how the variety and velocity of data makes MongoDB an ideal solution:

We get data in from all different kinds of sources and formats, and we get it at different times. Now, what we have to do is predict the future and how you're planning on using the data. That's where traditional databases fall down. That's where you'll see MongoDB. We want to have the ability to find insights and be able to react quickly to those insights.

Years later, Capital One advertises hundreds of jobs for those with MongoDB experience. (Hint: You may need to know how to roll back a MongoDB query for some of those jobs.) Capital One is doing impressive work with MongoDB, but it's not alone in its use of MongoDB for financial services. Goldman Sachs, Citi, Barclays, BBVA, Charles Schwab, FICO, HSBC, and Intuit are just a few MongoDB customers that have spoken publicly of how and why they use MongoDB. And, yes, some of these companies you may remember from the re:Invent main stage over the years.

MongoDB to the Moon!

Years before NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) took to the re:Invent stage (2016), the U.S. public agency was running MongoDB throughout NASA. By 2018, MongoDB was involved in the hugely interesting NASA Deep Space Network (DSN), a primary resource for communications and navigation for NASA's and partner agencies' interplanetary space missions. NASA had recently upgraded its decades-old infrastructure to base its modern Loading Analysis and Planning Software (LAPS) on Linux and MongoDB. LAPS, as a scientific paper details, "is responsible for long-term planning and forecasting, including studies and analysis of new missions, changed mission requirements, downtime, and new or changed antenna capabilities."

Around the same time, and a key part of DSN operations, NASA was also looking for ways to improve the efficiency of operating antennas across the globe. The heart of this initiative was NASA's Link Complexity and Maintenance software (LCM), which stores all pertinent data in MongoDB. Hence, while it might not be accurate to say that MongoDB runs on the Moon, it would be true to say MongoDB helps NASA manage space missions to the Moon—and beyond.

Can you hear me now?

"[I]t’s just a massive moment for us at Verizon,” declared Hans Vestberg, chairman and CEO of Verizon, at re:Invent in 2019. He was talking about the company's partnership with AWS to deliver 5G network edge computing using AWS Wavelength. What wasn't said in the keynote, but that Robert Belson, Principal Engineer, Corporate Strategy, Verizon, explained, is that the vision was incomplete without MongoDB. “Verizon 5G Edge is a mobile edge computing platform, which embeds popular hyperscaler compute and storage, such as AWS Wavelength, at the edge of our 4G and 5G networks so application builders can extend existing workloads using the same popular services they know and love," he explained. “However, certain services, such as databases, are not natively supported, which is where [MongoDB] Atlas and Realm come into play by creating unprecedented flexibility for the developer and the end customer.”

As we've described, Verizon decided that a comprehensive data platform was needed to make its 5G edge computing dream a reality. So Verizon integrated Atlas Functions with the Verizon edge discovery service to help direct 5G mobile clients to the topologically closest database instance across a customer’s edge deployment. In tandem, Verizon has overlaid a data persistence layer using MongoDB Realm, thereby enabling personalized experiences to extend to the network edge. Verizon is also using Atlas Device Sync and Realm to ensure the seamless synchronization of data between devices, the cloud and edge-of-network, online and offline.

Customers love MongoDB + AWS

Beginning to see a pattern here? While not every customer highlighted by AWS at re:Invent is a MongoDB customer, many are, including the few for which we've been able to provide some detail. Others include Epic Games, which runs its wildly popular game Fortnite on MongoDB; or Volkswagen, which uses MongoDB throughout its web applications and in its Car Net service; or Siemens, which runs MongoDB at the heart of its Monet system to provide monitoring, controlling, and remote management of field devices for advanced energy management services. This year while watching the various customers take the stage in re:Invent keynotes, keep in mind that they're also very likely a MongoDB customer, because customers that seek the agility and performance of AWS also tend to like how MongoDB's flexible data model enables them to do much more with their data.

Interested in learning more? The best way might be to try fully managed MongoDB Atlas for free. You can get started now.