InfluxData Blog - Evan Kaplan

InfluxDB 3 on Amazon Timestream for InfluxDB: Real-Time Performance, Now Fully Managed on AWS

Evan Kaplan (InfluxData) — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 07:30:00 +0000

Today, we’re announcing a major milestone for developers building the next generation of intelligent, real-time systems: InfluxDB 3 is available on Amazon Timestream for InfluxDB, now the default time series database offered directly in the AWS Management Console. This brings InfluxDB 3, our next-generation time series database, directly into the AWS ecosystem for the first time. Starting today, both InfluxDB 3 Core (open source) and InfluxDB 3 Enterprise are available as fully-managed services on Amazon Timestream for InfluxDB, giving developers a direct path to deploy and scale real-time workloads on AWS.

We’re proud to bring InfluxDB to AWS in a way that not only meets developers where they already build, but also reinforces our commitment to the open source model, ensuring it remains vibrant and community-driven.

This is about meeting developers at the moment AI crosses from the digital world into the physical one, where precision and reliability become mission-critical.

Precision is Critical

While AI tools, such as LLMs, excel at generating code, copy, and images, their nondeterministic nature means their output is inherently unpredictable. That core trait makes them unsuitable for control-oriented problems, like steering industrial equipment, balancing energy grids, or guiding autonomous vehicles. These applications demand verifiable outcomes, which require systems that operate with deterministic precision. In these domains, a single misread signal can lead to downtime, safety risks, or costly disruptions, so every action must be provably correct.

High-resolution, high-cardinality time series is the foundation for real-world intelligence. It captures not just what changed, but how it changed, and the context of those changes across related signals. That combination of real-time data and context gives Industrial AI and machine learning models the predictive intelligence they need to act with confidence.

Built for the Future of Time Series

InfluxDB 3 is purpose-built for these demands. It ingests millions of unique measurements every second—fast enough to capture nanosecond-level changes in a power grid or every micro-movement of an industrial robot. Queries return in under 10 milliseconds, so predictive models can learn and react in real-time, often before an operator even knows there’s a problem.

Its built-in Python Processing Engine lets developers enrich and analyze data as it arrives, powering on-the-fly forecasting, anomaly detection, and alerting right inside the database. Unlimited cardinality ensures that even as sensors multiply and event dimensions explode, performance remains steady, giving AI systems the high-resolution signal they need for deterministic decisions.

The Power of AWS + InfluxDB

Bringing InfluxDB 3 to Amazon Timestream for InfluxDB puts these capabilities on AWS’s global infrastructure and makes InfluxDB the go-to time series option directly inside the AWS console. Developers can stream and query high-resolution data at scale and immediately connect with services like AWS Lambda, SageMaker, and Kinesis to train and deploy models in real-time.

Running InfluxDB 3 on AWS removes the usual operational overhead, allowing teams to concentrate on building applications and acting on insights. With no infrastructure to provision and no complex configuration, it brings together the openness and innovation of InfluxDB and the reliability and scale of AWS services.

Just as important, it ensures we continue to offer open source that’s free, community-driven, and available to all. Open source remains the core of who we are and the engine that drives our community forward. That commitment helps tame the inherent complexity of time series, making it more approachable for developers and more powerful in practice.

Enterprise-Grade from Day One

For production workloads, InfluxDB 3 Enterprise on Amazon Timestream for InfluxDB delivers:

Multi-region durability and automatic failover to safeguard data and ensure business continuity
Read replicas for high availability and elastic query throughput
Enhanced security and a diskless, cloud-native architecture for seamless scalability and consistently low-latency performance

Developers can start with InfluxDB 3 Core, our open source engine, and easily scale to Enterprise without re-architecting or migrating data.

Powering the Next Generation of Intelligent Systems

Bringing InfluxDB 3 to Amazon Timestream for InfluxDB opens a new chapter: time series at cloud scale, ready for the next wave of AI and real-time applications.

This is the infrastructure that will power tomorrow’s breakthroughs: systems that learn, react, and adapt with nanosecond precision.

To our community: your feedback and innovation continue to guide our journey. We can’t wait to see what you build.

InfluxDB 3: Fully Available for the Future of Time Series

Evan Kaplan (InfluxData) — Mon, 13 Jan 2025 06:30:00 +0000

Today, we are announcing the public alpha of the newest additions to the InfluxDB 3 time series database product line: InfluxDB 3 Core, our latest open source product, and InfluxDB 3 Enterprise, a commercial version built on Core that provides enhanced functionality for enterprise-scale applications.

It’s been more than four years since we began the journey to rebuild the core of InfluxDB. Today, with the introduction of the open source and enterprise versions, we are excited to extend the product line to a much broader base of community users and customers. This product line represents the embodiment of a decade of expertise in addressing the complexities of managing time series data at scale. InfluxDB 3 delivers products capable of handling high-speed, high-cardinality data from the edge to the cloud, supporting critical use cases in observability, IoT/IIoT, and real-time monitoring and control.

Time series: the foundation for AI and intelligent systems

Time series data is everywhere, capturing the pulse of our connected world and powering the digital and physical systems we rely on. Every connected device and application generates a relentless stream of time series data that, when collected and analyzed, serves as the foundation for training AI models that learn, adapt, and operate autonomously.

Analyzing data through the lens of time reveals patterns and trends that unlock predictions, enable automation, and drive real-time decision-making. High-resolution time series data doesn’t just reflect what happened; it provides critical context for detection and response, driving systems that learn and adapt autonomously.

Managing this data at scale is inherently challenging, but InfluxDB 3 is purpose-built to meet the real-time requirements of time series data. From ingesting data from millions of sensors to performing complex, high-speed queries, InfluxDB 3 moves systems from reactive to proactive, transforming data points into actionable, real-time intelligence.

Today, we are taking another bold step toward this vision with the public alpha release of the next InfluxDB 3 products, delivering the performance and scalability required to handle even the most demanding time series workloads.

Introducing InfluxDB 3 Core & Enterprise

InfluxDB 3 Core represents a new paradigm in time series data management: a high-performance recent data engine that delivers exceptional performance for real-time monitoring, data collection, and streaming analytics use cases. InfluxDB 3 Enterprise builds on Core’s foundation by adding historical analysis and data compaction capabilities for efficient querying across any time range, along with enterprise-grade features such as read replicas, high availability, scalability, and enhanced security.

Both Core and Enterprise can run as single-node software that’s easy to set up and run, giving developers an operationally simple database to manage high-resolution data. This announcement extends the InfluxDB 3 product line, making it available in early alpha for developers to bring high performance to even the most demanding time series data workloads.

The journey to InfluxDB 3

InfluxDB 3 represents a fundamental reimagining of what a time series platform can deliver: transforming high-resolution data into actionable intelligence that underpins today’s systems and applications. When we set out to build this new generation of InfluxDB, we didn’t just aim to improve performance; we addressed the seismic shifts happening in how data is collected, transformed, and acted upon.

This required a bold decision to completely re-engineer InfluxDB:

We rewrote the core engine in Rust, a cutting-edge programming language for performance, and re-engineered it to be columnar, delivering orders-of-magnitude improvements in performance and compression.
We embraced, contributed to, and invested in open standards like Apache Arrow, DataFusion, and Parquet, ensuring interoperability and flexibility.
We designed for the future, building a platform that scales seamlessly to meet the demands of high-volume time series data that powers real-time systems, predictive analytics, and real-world AI applications.
We developed a product that could be deployed across multiple environments and truly meets developers where and how they want to build.
We recognized the emergence of lakehouses as the “workbenches” for model building and analytical workloads and architected a real-time operational database built around a shared file system with zero ETL.

The result is a platform powered by a high-performance columnar database engine and engineered to address these challenges and set a new benchmark for time series management:

High-speed ingest to capture high-frequency data from multiple sources
Real-time querying to analyze millions of data points per second
Separation of compute and storage to balance cost and performance, even as data volumes scale
Unlimited cardinality to analyze massive volumes of high-resolution data without limits
Native SQL and broader ecosystem compatibility for seamless integration with popular BI tools without needing to learn a new language

The InfluxDB 3 product line

With InfluxDB 3, we’re delivering on a vision to support developers across every environment—cloud, on-premises, or at the edge. Our goal is to provide the right product for every need and use case so developer and enterprises can build and deploy on their terms:

Fully managed InfluxDB 3: For businesses that need high performance at scale. With fully managed operations, seamless scaling, and enterprise-grade security, our pay-as-you-go and enterprise-grade fully managed products are ideal for cloud-first organizations.
Self-managed InfluxDB 3: Built for teams requiring full control, our self-managed product delivers high performance and flexibility for large-scale deployments. Run it on-premises, in private clouds, or self-managed public clouds, with Kubernetes-based containers and independently scalable ingest and query tiers.
Simple set up InfluxDB 3 (in early alpha): InfluxDB 3 Core and Enterprise bring the capabilities of InfluxDB 3 to the developer masses. With a simple, single-node set up with Core or Enterprise, and a multi-node set up with Enterprise that can run with or without Kubernetes, InfluxDB 3 can be deployed in seconds with uncompromising performance.

Built on the FDAP stack: open source at our core

InfluxDB 3 Core continues our commitment to permissive open source software, dual-licensed under either MIT or Apache 2. We believe permissive open source is the key to building a vibrant community—the kind that drives real innovation. It’s not just about licensing; it’s a core principle that shapes how we build and evolve our technology.

InfluxDB 3 is built on the FDAP stack—Apache Arrow Flight, Apache DataFusion, Apache Arrow, and Apache Parquet—all foundational technologies under the Apache Software Foundation (ASF). As we developed InfluxDB 3, one of our guiding principles was to embrace open source wherever possible so we could build around a larger community and accelerate platform maturity with more features and functionality.

The results speak for themselves. Since we began working on InfluxDB 3 nearly five years ago, we’ve played a critical role in advancing Apache DataFusion into a high-performance columnar query engine. Performance has long been a central focus for the DataFusion community, and this emphasis on speed has attracted significant contributions from a growing and active community. Today, DataFusion stands as a Top-Level Project within the ASF, a milestone achieved in part thanks to InfluxData’s substantial contributions and recently earned recognition as the fastest engine for querying Apache Parquet files.

This focus on open standards and performance underpins the entire InfluxDB 3 product suite. By building around these technologies, we’re putting our open source efforts into these standards—often leading these upstream projects—delivering a highly performant platform that combines speed, flexibility, and interoperability, enabling developers to meet the demands of modern time series workloads.

Looking ahead

Today’s announcement and availability of the extended InfluxDB 3 product line marks a pivotal step in simplifying the complexity of managing massive time series data volumes. As data grows in scale, speed, and complexity, platforms must evolve. InfluxDB 3 is built to meet this challenge head-on.

This release is fundamentally about putting developers first. InfluxDB 3 simplifies the complexity of managing time series data, staying true to our Time to Awesome ethos: less overhead, less friction, and more time for developers to focus on what matters most—building solutions that drive impact.

To our incredible community of developers and customers: thank you. Your feedback and innovation fuel everything we do. If you’re new to InfluxDB, now is the perfect time to start. Time series data is everywhere, underpinning the systems that power our world. InfluxDB 3 transforms this data into real-time intelligence, giving developers the tools to manage today’s challenges efficiently and build tomorrow’s innovations.

We’re ready for the journey ahead and look forward to being part of yours.

AWS Partners with InfluxData to Bring InfluxDB Open Source to Developers Around the World

Evan Kaplan (InfluxData) — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 12:00:00 +0000

Today, AWS announced Amazon Timestream for InfluxDB, a new managed offering for AWS customers to run single-instance open source InfluxDB natively within the AWS console. This partnership represents a significant multi-year commitment by AWS to combine its global reach and accessibility with our industry-leading time series database, InfluxDB. AWS adding InfluxDB as a preferred time series database reflects the demand from AWS customers for InfluxDB and evidence of the time series market acceleration.

At InfluxData, we are deeply committed to open source–both building an open product that can be improved by InfluxData and the developer community and making this product accessible to as many developers as possible. This means simple, logical entry points and distributing InfluxDB to developers around the world.

To date, Timestream referred strictly to the time series database-as-a-service offered by Amazon. With the introduction of InfluxDB to the AWS product offering for time series, Amazon is also announcing the renaming of that database-as-a-service offering to “LiveAnalytics.” Moving forward, Timestream refers to the category of time series products offered by Amazon, which now includes LiveAnalytics and InfluxDB as distinct time series engines.

By partnering with AWS, we’re making open source InfluxDB available to developers in every industry, market, and region. In 2024, the cloud is the de facto platform for modern software. That also makes the cloud the best way to build, run, and distribute open source, so this partnership puts time series capabilities right in the hands of every developer working with AWS.

As developers increasingly rely on time series databases to manage IoT and real-time analytics workloads, our partnership with AWS becomes even more critical. Time series data is the foundation for highly intelligent, instrumented systems. Time series databases are key to collecting and managing data produced by these systems in real-time. AWS recognizes the rapid growth of this category and the need to give developers purpose-built tools to manage time series data with the lowest barrier to entry. Amazon Timestream for InfluxDB delivers on this vision.

Amazon Timestream for InfluxDB now available

Amazon Timestream for InfluxDB is a new way for developers to use a single-node open source InfluxDB on managed AWS infrastructure with the scalability, reliability, and security of the AWS ecosystem but without the overhead that comes with self-managing InfluxDB. With just a few clicks, you can quickly set up, migrate, operate, and scale an InfluxDB database on AWS. The managed instance automatically configures for optimal performance and availability so you can start building and running time series applications immediately. No upfront costs, licenses, or commitments are required, and you only pay for what you use.

Available today. The initial Amazon Timestream for InfluxDB offering is based on InfluxDB OSS 2.x, making it ideal for open source users with smaller workloads that only require a single-node instance. Through the console, customers can opt into additional performance and scalability. Today, this includes high availability with AWS Multi-AZ for synchronous data replication and backup across availability zones in as little as 60 seconds with zero data loss. It also includes AWS-grade security with encryption of data in transit and at rest with AWS Key Management Service (KMS) and a configurable network using Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC).

Coming soon. Because we’re actively developing InfluxDB 3 open source, it isn’t yet available in Amazon Timestream for InfluxDB. The InfluxDB 3 product line will arrive in Timestream for InfluxDB in the form of InfluxDB Community, currently in development for the new product suite. Once available, we’ll deliver two new modules specific to the 3 product offering: a Scale Module for distributed querying from multiple instances and a Security Module for fine-grained permissions, single sign-on, and audit logging.

AWS-hosted, InfluxData managed, powered by InfluxDB 3

Last year, we delivered a full product suite based on InfluxDB 3, our rebuilt database engine designed for time series analytics. InfluxDB 3 can ingest and analyze millions of data points per second, delivering real-time analytics for high-cardinality time series workloads. It also provides a 90 percent reduction in storage costs through best-in-category compression. With InfluxDB 3, users can perform advanced analytics on large fleets of devices in real-time at an unlimited scale. InfluxDB is an open platform based on the Open Data Architecture and built for seamless lakehouse integration.

Whether you need to manage small or enterprise-scale workloads, InfluxData and AWS have a product for you. InfluxDB Cloud Serverless runs on AWS and delivers a fully managed, elastic database running on multi-tenant cloud infrastructure. It’s ideal for teams with small to medium workloads. InfluxDB Cloud Dedicated also runs on AWS and provides users with dedicated, fully-managed cloud infrastructure optimized for large-scale workloads with added enterprise-grade security features. InfluxDB Cloud Dedicated and Serverless are part of the InfluxDB 3 product suite and include the latest capabilities for real-time analytics, support for SQL, and unlimited cardinality data, resulting in significant performance improvements.

Leading the time series category

Time series databases are now foundational to the modern data stack. As the world around us becomes more instrumented, applications, sensors, and systems emit a relentless stream of time series data. This data, when collected and analyzed, delivers valuable real-time insights.

The partnership to make InfluxDB a preferred AWS time series database signifies InfluxData’s category leadership and the high-growth market for time series databases. Together with AWS, we will build on this momentum and drive the market forward with products that support developers at every stage of their time series journeys.

InfluxData Closes Series E Round and Raises $81 Million in Capital

Evan Kaplan (InfluxData) — Wed, 08 Feb 2023 03:30:00 +0000

Today is an important milestone for InfluxData. I am thrilled to share that we closed our $51 million Series E round, and a $30 million debt facility, raising $81 million in capital. The Series E round was led by our new investors Princeville Capital and Citi Ventures, with participation from our existing investors Battery Ventures, Mayfield Fund, Sapphire Ventures, Trinity Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, Sorenson Capital, and Harmony Partners. I’m also excited to announce the addition of Princeville Capital’s Vivian Huang to our Board of Directors.

For us at InfluxData, today’s news is bigger than an investment. It’s a validation of the acceleration of the time series market and the long-term opportunity in front of us. It also reinforces our mission to give developers the tools they need to innovate with time series data.

Leading the time series market with InfluxDB

Time series data is all around us. As enterprises move large volumes of data to the cloud, the volume of time series data these systems and processes generate continues to grow exponentially. Organizations use time series data to understand change and to identify and predict trends over time. With so much time series data available, organizations in every industry and vertical need tools to help preserve and understand their data through the lens of time.

Most enterprises already utilize their time series data, but many are still just starting their journey with purpose-built databases for their time-stamped data. We continue to evangelize to these enterprises, as well as to developers who are already deep in the world of time series. These realities, coupled with the exponential growth of devices and sources producing time series data, make the need for InfluxDB greater than ever. The time series market is increasingly vibrant with a good selection of strong competitors – we are excited and ready to compete on a broader level as this market expands.

As the pioneer of the modern time series market, InfluxData played a pivotal role in driving its recent growth. I credit much of this to our Founder and CTO, Paul Dix, who saw the opportunity in front of him to extract value from time series data amid the rise of modern applications – especially those in IoT, financial services, and Web3 – and his relentless focus in pushing the category forward.

The journey ahead

With this funding, our path forward is clear: usher in a new era of data intelligence that combines time series and real-time analytics. All this is powered by our new database engine, InfluxDB IOx. We will scale the rollout of our new database engine to make InfluxDB more accessible to an even wider population of developers.

InfluxDB IOx represents a massive leap forward for our core database technology. It’s now easier than ever for developers to get started working with time series data and to derive value from it. With comprehensive SQL support, real-time query performance, and unbounded cardinality, all built around a strong open source foundation of Apache Arrow, DataFusion, Flight SQL, and Parquet, we have reimagined InfluxDB to power the most sophisticated and large-scale analytics use cases on the market.

In the coming months, we will deploy many new features on top of the new database core: bulk data ingest, bulk data export, integrations with other third-party systems, and more. We also plan to launch dedicated cloud tiers and a new on-prem InfluxDB Enterprise product based on this new database core. The intent behind each feature is clear: power real-time analytics across high-cardinality time series data.

Stronger together

I’m incredibly bullish on the opportunity in front of InfluxData and the expanding time series market. We’ve surpassed more than 1,900 commercial customers globally and amassed a strong open source community of 750,000 running instances of InfluxDB and millions of Telegraf agents out in the wild, collecting the data at the heart of many projects and applications. A glance through GitHub shows nearly 25,000 stars for InfluxDB, and our vibrant user community contains thousands of users looking for the best way to handle their own time series data needs.

I want to close by saying thank you: To our community of users and customers, to our new and existing investors for their investment in our vision, and finally to our incredible team of Influxers. Together, we will work to build on the momentum we’ve created and continue to transform the industry with a time series platform developers truly love.

Time Series for Intelligent Sustainability

Evan Kaplan (InfluxData) — Mon, 11 Jul 2022 07:00:00 +0000

As the world continues to face unparalleled uncertainties due to climate change, using energy efficiently is more important than ever. Time series data plays a critical role in helping organizations operate in a greener and more sustainable way.

In Finland, EnerKey operates a platform that drives sustainability and energy management to unearth savings from consumption data. It helps organizations reduce their environmental footprint by combining weather, time series and geospatial data to monitor energy consumption, indoor air quality, waste and emissions. Real-time access to this information helps its clients to detect fluctuations in energy usage and make informed decisions on how to improve efficiency.

A focus on efficiency

EnerKey works with a variety of clients, including energy providers, local government entities, retail operators and commercial real estate owners. Many of these clients have many properties distributed across multiple cities. In total, the platform measures energy consumption from more than 140,000 meters deployed across more than 20,000 properties. The platform also needs to be able to handle utility data (i.e. water, electrical, heating) in over ninety different data formats. Once the EnerKey platform ingests all this data, it provides real-time insights to users that allows them to track energy usage across multiple properties.

In order to optimize performance and cost savings for customers, EnerKey needed a solution that could handle billions of metrics and provide access to historical data (from the previous 10 years in some cases). To handle all this time series data effectively, EnerKey chose InfluxDB.

Turning time series data green

It’s not enough to simply ingest and store time series data. The real magic with EnerKey is the platform’s ability to merge various data sets to actionable insights. EnerKey leverages InfluxDB to combine raw data from utilities with other building and environmental information, such as geospatial location data and external climate data, to deliver real-time analytics and to forecast future energy usage.

For example, EnerKey uses geospatial data to pinpoint the location of a property. It then uses climate data to analyze the impact that external weather has on that property. Tracking this data over time allows EnerKey to predict building energy needs based on the weather. Combining these insights with the actual energy usage of each property allows users to optimize usage so it’s more efficient. Even saving a few hundred Euros per building per month can translate into major savings for companies that own or manage hundreds of properties. EnerKey consolidates all this information in one place, so even users with broadly distributed property holdings can track everything in one place. This creates an additional operational efficiency, especially for real estate owners and management companies that pay close attention to utility usage and costs.

Having access to granular energy data allows EnerKey to help users in other ways, too. In multi-tenant facilities, the platform can distinguish usage for each individual unit, enabling commercial real estate clients to differentiate, and by extension better understand tenant usage. EnerKey’s ability to handle such a broad range of data and use cases improves energy efficiency in commercial buildings around the world.

All we need is less

As a company, EnerKey’s guiding principle is “all we need is less.” The EnerKey platform manifests that idea for clients by identifying areas where excessive energy use occurs and areas where users can improve energy savings. EnerKey helps clients save up to 30 percent on utilities. Not only is this a win for the bottom line, but the subsequent reduction in energy usage is a victory for the planet as well.

InfluxData is proud to be part of such an impactful project and jumps at the opportunity to partner with like-minded, eco-conscious companies because each partnership is a step toward a greener future. We are proud to work with EnerKey, and thrilled to see how its use of time series data makes the world a better (and greener) place.

Spinning Time Series into Efficient Wind Power

Evan Kaplan (InfluxData) — Mon, 27 Jun 2022 07:00:00 +0000

Operating sustainably and promoting green practices can be more complex than you imagine. The benefits of sustainable practices can be significant for businesses, people and the planet. Companies need to ensure that they’re achieving those benefits in a way that complies with established rules and regulations to maximize the impact these initiatives have.

Wind is an important source of renewable energy, accounting for more than six percent of global electricity in 2020. Wind turbines generate electricity by capturing kinetic energy from the wind, without using fossil fuels, which translates into reduced carbon emissions. This inexhaustible energy source creates jobs and wealth for the local economies where they operate, making communities more productive and healthier all around.

Against this backdrop, InfluxData is incredibly proud that VLEEMO (an abbreviation for “Vlaamse Ecologie Energie Milieu Onderneming,” which translates to “Flemish Ecology Energy Environment Company”) leverages InfluxDB as part of Factry Historian. Created by two Flemish companies specializing in renewable energy, VLEEMO is a pioneer in the wind energy field and uses time series data to optimize wind turbine performance and meet regulatory requirements.

Harbor-based wind farming

VLEEMO manages 38 wind turbines that are scattered across the harbor of Antwerp (Belgium), Europe’s second-largest port. Together, these wind turbines generate enough power for more than 90,000 households.

Operating wind turbines in the harbor can be challenging, and it’s VLEEMO’s responsibility to make sure that they run both efficiently and safely. Turbine operators need to consider multiple factors on a day-to-day basis to ensure the turbines are clear for operation, and VLEEMO must abide by regulatory and safety boundaries, as well.

Operating within complicated constraints

The first regulatory boundary relates to shadow flicker. Shadow flicker occurs on sunny days when wind turbine blades cast a shadow across the landscape, causing an on-and-off flicker effect as the blades rotate. These moving shadows can be a nuisance to people and even cause headaches and stress. Therefore, Belgium limits the amount of allowed shadow flicker to a maximum of 30 minutes per day.

There are also physical safety concerns when operating wind turbines in cold, icy conditions. Ice can form on the blades, which can present a potential danger to nearby people and structures if ice is inadvertently discharged from the blades.

Collecting the necessary data to operate within these boundaries is critical to ensure the turbines maximize their energy output for the people and businesses that rely on them. Prior to working with InfluxDB, collecting this data was tedious and time-consuming, and lacked real-time insights. VLEEMO monitored its turbines using limited, remote-controlled SCADA systems. Turbine operators had to manually evaluate these systems for each individual turbine. It was inefficient and often resulted in reduced electricity production.

Harmonizing energy production with human interaction

Tracking individual turbines in real-time would allow VLEEMO to maximize the amount of energy produced at all times. To accomplish this, VLEEMO uses InfluxDB as part of Factry Historian, a powerful and easy-to-use data management platform, to layer additional data sources on top of existing data, creating a complete snapshot of each turbine that VLEEMO could access at any point in time. This created a two-way information stream that enabled VLEEMO to analyze received data and send instructions back to each turbine accordingly.

For example, by using temperature sensors on the wind turbines and combining that data with weather forecast data, VLEEMO could now predict when icy conditions will occur and proactively shut down the turbines. VLEEMO can then use its blade heating system to remove ice from the blades and restart turbines once they pass a visual inspection.

Similarly, VLEEMO uses time series data to anticipate when shadow flicker will occur and correlate that information with data about when people will actually be in the vicinity of the turbines. Because many turbines are located near an industrial area, VLEEMO can schedule them to run at optimal times to avoid shadow flicker when people are around, and to allow the flicker when they’re not, such as on weekends or holidays.

Capturing and managing time series data allowed VLEEMO to operate turbines as efficiently as possible, while ensuring they meet regulatory compliance and maximize energy production. Improving operational efficiency also contributes to Antwerp’s continued efforts to support sustainable energy. VLEEMO is a shining example of how time series data can help create a greener world. At InfluxData, we’re incredibly honored to be part of these kinds of initiatives that are driving such an impact for our customers, their communities and the planet.

Bboxx Taps Time Series Data to Light Up the Developing World

Evan Kaplan (InfluxData) — Mon, 13 Jun 2022 03:00:00 +0000

Using technology to help businesses thrive is always a thrill, but it doesn’t compare to the sense of accomplishment on both a personal and organizational level when you see your tech used to positively impact humanity. It’s one thing to function in a support role for these initiatives, but it’s also important to acknowledge the businesses at the vanguard, building their primary mission around positive human and global impact.

One such business that I’m proud to call an InfluxData customer is Bboxx, a high-tech utility company that engineered a clever solution to the energy poverty issue that stymies more than 1.5 billion people globally.

For entrepreneurs in the world’s least connected places, what stands between them and success is a dearth of reliable electricity. Bboxx helps combat this with solar-powered smart batteries that power devices including lights, radios, and low-powered televisions. Small but mighty, these devices connect small business owners with their customers, extend farming capabilities, and empower children to do schoolwork and read at night.

Bboxx co-founder and CEO Mansoor Hamayun says electricity access is critical to human progress. “The moral motivation to starting Bboxx is the fact that, when people don’t have access to electricity, it limits their potential,” he says. Bboxx has deployed more than 200,000 rooftop solar units that power batteries to provide access to clean energy for cooking, school study, and running home-based businesses and farms.

Providing electricity where it’s needed

Roughly 759 million people worldwide live without access to electricity, and of those, 570 million are located in Africa. Meanwhile, another 840 million people worldwide depend on an unreliable electric grid. The primary alternative in these cases is kerosene, an unsafe and expensive fuel that spews soot and noxious fumes like carbon monoxide (CO), nitric oxides (NOx), and sulfur dioxide (SO2), which are hazardous to humans and detrimental to the environment.

The UN’s Sustainable Development Goal of Energy For All inspired Bboxx. Because the company uses solar-powered technology, its boxes are also carbon-neutral — or even carbon-negative. Even armed with cutting-edge technology to help overcome the world’s scarcity of electricity, inherent challenges exist for monitoring power in the developing world.

In order to optimize the performance of their products, Bboxx engineers needed to understand the data streaming from their electronics and batteries. To do so, the company turned to InfluxDB, the platform built for time series data applications, to build its operating system, Bboxx Pulse. Mansoor says Pulse is able to manage Bboxx’s range of products and customers, as well as the logistics of monitoring thousands of solar panels and batteries.

Overcoming challenges in developing nations

In many developing nations, an unreliable electrical grid also means patchy internet signals. Ideally, Bboxx units connect every four hours to send text log strings when the internet is available. However, some units in remote areas can go up to six months without reporting in, creating a challenge for writing and transforming data. Further, the units collect different data at variable rates. For example, dormant units record their status every 10 minutes, but units that are charging or discharging report on every megawatt.

This is where the ability to analyze and manage time series data comes into play. To continuously monitor units and view usage patterns and anomalies that would help improve the product over time, Bboxx uses a collection agent to collect data related to how and when the units charge, usage patterns, and anomalies in battery performance that might indicate a problem.

For example, they can filter time series data collected to identify usage patterns for lead-acid batteries, a type of unit with some known issues. By combining data filters and visualization, they can quickly see if individual units are failing or just in high use.

Bboxx’s impressive results are only the beginning

More than 2 million people now have access to clean energy from Bboxx-powered homes, which would otherwise have collectively produced about 715,845 metric tons of CO2e. The company’s systems replaced 1.93 million kerosene lamps and empowered nearly 128,000 people to improve their economic activities.

Aka Koffi, a gardener from Togo, uses a solar-powered Bboxx water pump to increase his growing area. He told Bboxx that irrigating the garden and fields with a watering can was tedious. Using the new electric pumps makes the job easier and increases crop yields.

“With the solar pump, I can work until the night if I need to without paying for electricity or fuel,” he said.

Bboxx is just one example of organizations using time series data to drive innovation and, ultimately, make the world a better place. We’re proud to be associated with such organizations, and we look forward to continuing to expand our capabilities so we can further support the mission of leveraging technology for the good of humanity.

InfluxData's Business Continuity Plan for COVID-19

Evan Kaplan (InfluxData) — Wed, 11 Mar 2020 15:06:56 -0700

To our InfluxData customers:

In light of the current global situation with COVID-19, I wanted to share with you InfluxData’s plans to ensure business continuity and the safety of our employees and communities. Our top priorities continue to be the health and wellbeing of our employees, as well as the mitigation of potential service disruptions to our customers.

As a remote-first company, we have natural resilience and processes in place to continue to deliver on all aspects of our business - including product development and delivery of support services. Our engineering, operations, and data processing facilities are designed and deployed in multiple, globally distributed regions. At this time, we do not anticipate any impact to our ability to continue to render services to our customers.

Our company has a majority-remote workforce with teams distributed across the U.S. and Europe. Given the current global situation with COVID-19, we have implemented a work-from-home policy to promote the health and safety of our employees, their families and our communities.

We are in constant communication with our staff, customers, and cloud service providers - closely monitoring the situation and evaluating our policies as it evolves. More information about InfluxData’s business contingency planning is available on our website. Please do not hesitate to contact your sales manager or our support team with questions or concerns, or send email to businesscontinuity@influxdata.com.

InfluxData 2019 Year in Review

Evan Kaplan (InfluxData) — Fri, 10 Jan 2020 11:59:13 -0700

2019 was a great year for InfluxData. But before I get into the details, I need to emphasize that none of this was possible without the incredible open source community around InfluxDB, the customers that rely on our products, and the investors that believe in our team. In the past year, we surpassed 700 paying customers, raised Series D funding, launched operations in Europe and transitioned to a cloud-first company with the release of the most significant evolution of the product since it launched in 2014. We’re proud of all that we’ve accomplished and humbled by the support we’ve received along the way. And so, as we embark on a new year and new decade, I’d like to acknowledge some of the biggest achievements and events of 2019.

Explosive community growth

The InfluxDB community continued to thrive last year as we saw InfluxDB usage grow by more than 60%, with nearly 350,000 daily active instances. We are and always have been a developer-focused company, so we amplified overall engagement efforts on several fronts:

Introducing the InfluxAces program to recognize and support leaders in the InfluxDB community. The team of Aces are out there speaking at conferences, hosting meetups and engaging developers to share their InfluxDB expertise and passion
Organizing 25 time series meetups around the world — from Boston to Bangalore and Minneapolis to Paris
Hosting three successful InfluxDays conferences in San Francisco, London and New York; learning interesting InfluxDB use cases from Robinhood, the U.S. Army, Wayfair, Optum Health and many more

InfluxDB Cloud 2.0

While we released many product updates throughout the year, the big news and main focus for the company was the launch of InfluxDB Cloud 2.0. This was a bet-the-company initiative that was 18 months in the making and represents a critical dimension of the future of time series technology. InfluxDB Cloud 2.0 is a powerful, elastically scalable platform for time-sensitive workloads. It’s the industry’s first serverless time series technology and marks the evolution of InfluxDB to a database as a service — bringing storage, UI and visualization, processing, monitoring, and alerting into a common API-driven platform. It’s highly customizable to allow developers and operators the flexibility they need for modern application development. It features advanced analytics with the power of Flux, transparent usage-based pricing and a free tier. The launch represents major R&D progress, but we’re really just getting started.

As part of our new emphasis on cloud, we announced a major new partnership with Google Cloud to make InfluxDB Cloud 2.0 available as a native offering on GCP. This was part of a larger Google initiative to support best-in-class open source software and make it available to its customers. InfluxDB Cloud will be available as the only time series platform on GCP later this quarter.

Expanding enterprise customer base

We also saw impressive growth in our enterprise user base over 2019, surpassing 700 customers. InfluxDB is empowering customers to maximize the value of their time-sensitive workloads by providing radical efficiency and real-time observability. New customers include Visa, Lego, Electronic Arts, and McLaren Automotive. Airbus Helicopters is using InfluxDB in R&D — collecting and analyzing sensor data collected during flight testing to improve the performance of its commercial aircraft — and NASA is using InfluxDB to optimize performance and prevent downtime of launch vehicles — collecting vehicle performance insights at 500ms intervals and analyzing them in real-time.

Company expansion & employee growth

As a company based on open source technology, InfluxData has always spanned international borders, but 2019 was the year that we really took things global. Last year, the team grew by nearly 60%, with a majority in technical roles and working remotely outside of our San Francisco HQ. To support this expanding workforce and increased demand for our products, we opened InfluxData offices in Austin and London. These operational expansion efforts were fueled by a $60 million Series D funding secured at the beginning of the year led by Norwest Venture Partners and joined by Sorenson Capital along with existing investors Sapphire Ventures, Battery Ventures, Mayfield Fund, Trinity Ventures and Harmony Partners. Their continued support emphasizes their confidence in the technology we’re building and the market category we’re defining.

Recognition

In the fast-paced world of software, innovation is key to success and a talented team is essential for that. Last year, InfluxData was named as one of Fast Company’s 50 Best Workplaces for Innovators. I believe that culture beats strategy every time, so it’s always been a focus for the company. We work hard to create a culture where employees feel encouraged and allowed to try new things, fail and try again. It’s an honor to be recognized among such other highly regarded organizations.

2020 is shaping up to be another great year for InfluxData. As time series continues to outpace every other database category in popularity, we’re focused on making it easier for developers to leverage the most powerful time series platform across even more use cases. We plan to keep growing our product offerings and our geographic footprint while maintaining our commitment to greater innovation and faster time to awesome. We hope you will continue with us on this incredible journey in the new year.