- Vendia is based on a serverless computing platform to exchanging data and code.
- The company raised $15.5 million to create a Vendia Share service.
- Vendia plans to implement a transaction process involving external partners alongside ERP systems.
Vendia raised $15.5 million to advance the creation of a Vendia Share service. IT teams can share data and code, and process third-party transactions. Vendia’s architecture, based on a serverless computing platform, makes it possible to exchange data and associated code that might, for instance, limit the use of that data. Dr. Tim Wagner is a former general manager and founder of the Lambda serverless computing platform at AWS. Shruthi Rao is a former head of blockchain business development at AWS. Together they founded the company.
What is a Vendia Share?
Developers can use Vendia Share to create applications that, irrespective of the platforms involved, can query, update and share data in real-time with transactional semantics preserved. Wagner, now the CEO of Vedia, said Vendia Share reconciles transactions using a network of NoSQL databases residing on a cloud platform chosen by the end-user, instead of having to rely on a blockchain network that does not readily scale to process transactions between third parties.
Vendia Share then makes use of programming interfaces for the GraphQL application to launch transactions that can scale up and down dynamically as required, Wagner said. There is no need for the constant availability of facilities. No additional computation is consumed because when the transaction is done, the resources immediately spin down,” he said.”
Currently, with support for other cloud platforms expected, the Vandia Sharing service integrates with cloud services such as AWS Lambda, Amazon SQS, and Amazon S3. Eventually, Wagner said, IT organizations will be able to reconcile transactions that can reside in any cloud using NoSQL databases of their choosing. Canvas Ventures, with participation from BMW I Ventures, Sorenson Ventures, and seed-stage investors, led the funding round. Wagner said Vendia would use part of the funds to add support outside AWS for cloud platforms.
Problems faced by Vendia
A longstanding dilemma has been the central problem Vendia is tackling. In order to reconcile transactions, major corporations today employ ERP applications operating on distributed databases. The problem faced by companies is that most of their business partners have either a different ERP system or can actually not afford to have one of their own. Organizations have invested in distributed ledgers running on blockchain databases in the hope of solving the problem. This would enable the documenting of immutable transactions involving multiple parties.
The problem with blockchain databases is that transactions need to be processed in milliseconds. But, it can’t be enabled as it is necessary to allow applications to stay current in near real-time. Alternatively, Vendia uses a serverless computing structure to leverage the transaction capabilities of a NoSQL database network to process these transactions. Sharing data and associated code makes it easier for developers to create applications. To further simplify transaction workflows, Vendia Share can also store data in a JSON format, Wagner added.
Transaction process via external partners
The degree to which organizations can abandon existing transaction processing platforms is not clear. Vendia is making a case for service. This can be implemented to process transactions involving external partners alongside ERP systems. The immediate consequence of that capacity is that it will be easier for companies to get new vendors on board.
Regardless of the use case, it is obvious that there’s another way to handle distributed transactions. This does not fundamentally change all that much since two-phase commit was used in a distributed database back in the 1980s is emerging from serverless computing frameworks.
