Cloud Stocks: Analysis of MongoDB’s PaaS Strategy

Database as a Service provider MongoDB (Nasdaq: MDB) is continuing to see strong growth even amid the current conditions. The company recently reported its second quarter results that surpassed market expectations. It has been focusing the last quarter on releasing several product upgrades to help make database management easier for developers.

MongoDB’s Financials

MongoDB’s revenues for the second quarter grew 39% to $138.3 million, ahead of the market’s forecast of $126.8 million. Adjusted loss of $0.22 per share was also ahead of the Street’s forecast of a loss of $0.39 per share.

By segment, Subscription revenues grew 41% to $132.5 million, and services revenues grew 11% to $5.8 million.

For the third quarter, MongoDB expects revenues of $137-$139 million with a net loss of $0.48-$0.45 per share. It expects to end the year with revenues of $549-$554 million and a net loss of $1.29-$1.21 per share. The market was looking for revenues of $118.66 million for the quarter with a net loss of $0.38 per share and full-year revenues of $514.27 million with a net loss of $1.31 per share.

MongoDB’s Growth

During the quarter, MongoDB introduced its latest release that boasts of new capabilities in its query language and flexible distributed systems architecture that will allow developers to build sophisticated transactional and analytical applications. It also announced the general availability of MongoDB Atlas Data Lake, allowing teams to query and analyze both structured and unstructured data using its query language. The Data Lake allows teams to submit single queries as well as analyze operational data.

Additionally, it announced the beta of Atlas Online Archive, which allows users to define rules that will automatically archive data from its Atlas database to cloud object storage. The Archive tool will grant customers the ability to retain their query and archive data without any extra effort. It will enable developers to deliver greater search experiences as well as migrate their data in the cloud, without having to manage an extra search technology.

For mobile developers, MongoDB announced MongoDB Realm that integrates the Realm mobile database acquired last year with the data access, movement, and manipulation of MongoDB Stitch. This edge-to-cloud data synchronization service will allow mobile database on the front end and MongoDB Atlas on the back end to help solve challenging data problems for mobile developers.

MongoDB’s PaaS Strategy: Platform or API

MongoDB’s PaaS strategy came into being when it made the $39 million acquisition of Realm last year. Realm was founded in 2011 as a mobile database that enabled its users to develop faster applications. It made it easy to build reactive apps with collaborative features and offline-first experiences. Since the acquisition, MongoDB’s PaaS ecosystem has grown to allow developers to download the open source version of the database to build using its API integration.

MongoDB’s PaaS Strategy: Developer Community

The acquisition of Realm has been critical to MongoDB’s developer community growth. Prior to the acquisition, Realm already had over 100,000 active developers. MongoDB has recorded more than 40 million downloads of its open source platform by developers.

MongoDB’s PaaS Strategy: Marketplace and Metrics

I think MongoDB could be a promising PaaS player. But I would like to see more recent developer metrics to prove my belief.

MongoDB’s Startup Program

MongoDB has been promoting the entrepreneurial spirit in the market by promoting a startup accelerator program. Formerly known as MongoDB Startup Accelerator, the MongoDB for Startups is a service that helps startups manage their database. Startups can apply for $3,000 in free MongoDB Atlas credits, get access to technical advisors, get discounts and deals from MongoDB’s partners and even leverage some co-marketing opportunities. Startups developing a product or a service, and at Series A or earlier funding stage can apply for the program. MongoDB has not recently disclosed the number of startups that it has helped through the process, but at the last count, the program had over 700 registered startups. The program is currently closed for the year and will begin accepting applications in the next year.

Its stock is currently trading at $209.64 with a market capitalization of $12.2 billion. It touched a 52-week high of $258.05 in May. It was trading at a year low of $93.81 in March this year.

Photo Credit: Garrett Heath/Flickr.com

This segment is a part in the series : Cloud Stocks