Mobile and Edge Solutions with MongoDB and Ditto

Mobile and edge solutions offer impressive opportunities for profit and growth for a variety of businesses around the world. Companies have consistently found ways to use mobile applications to grow revenue, cut costs, and stay ahead of the competition.

In the power and utilities sector, for example, field workers can get enabled quickly by accessing their daily tasks on mobile devices and, in retail, consumers can use mobile apps to skip lines, providing businesses with upselling opportunities that can result in larger transactions. Indeed, mobile commerce is estimated to make up 44.6% of total US retail ecommerce sales in 2024. For banks, increased use of mobile applications can reduce operating costs by decreasing the demand for in-person and phone-based customer service. At the same time, having a mobile app allows financial institutions to reach additional customers, as many internet users around the world (particularly in developing countries) rely on mobile access.

Time and time again, we’ve seen that the most successful apps are those thats meet modern user expectations. Specifically, apps need to be fast and reactive, without lags or crashes. And if internet connectivity drops, the app should continue functioning normally until connectivity is restored. In cases where the workforce is located in low-connectivity areas—e.g., warehouses, factories, and rural areas—peer-to-peer sync is a requirement for apps to communicate with each other and sync data.

In such an ever-important space, partnerships are critical to combining the strengths of organizations to create solutions that would be challenging to develop independently.

At MongoDB, we’re laser-focused on bringing the best solutions to customers. So we’re thrilled to announce MongoDB’s partnership with Ditto, a company that enables consistently fast data synchronization between devices like mobile phones and point-of-sale systems for mission-critical enterprise apps regardless of environment connectivity and existing infrastructure. With MongoDB and Ditto, businesses can drive consistent revenue at the edge without Wi-Fi, servers, or a cloud connection. Retailers can sell products, banks can deliver services, and energy companies can conduct operations anywhere without worrying about connectivity.

Illustration depicting mobile apps. The illustration contains a green phone with the app icon on it, with lines connecting it to a laptop

Welcome to our mobile partner, Ditto

Based in San Francisco, Ditto is revolutionizing the mobile app development space. Ditto technology uses existing devices like phones and tablets to create a distributed wireless network that can sync data anytime, even without the internet, Wi-Fi, or servers.

With Ditto’s SDK, devices automatically discover, connect, and sync with each other in peer-to-peer (P2P) mesh networks. This means that when the internet goes down or Wi-Fi is spotty, deskless workers can continue to serve customers or complete business-critical workflows.

Ditto manages a mesh network of devices and automatically syncs data changes locally in the mesh and opportunistically with the cloud when available. Depending on the environment and device positioning, Ditto intelligently switches between LAN, BLE, P2P Wi-Fi, IP-based transports, and cellular to ensure that apps get the fastest sync.

Ditto’s platform has two major components:

  • Small Peer/Ditto SDK: This is the Ditto SDK embedded into an application that lives on a mobile device, point of sale system, IoT device, and more. There can be many Small Peers in a solution. Small Peers self-organize and sync with each other regardless of internet connectivity and with the cloud when connectivity is available.

  • Big Peer: Ditto’s middleware platform that receives the data from small peers and forwards them to MongoDB.

And some of the unique value propositions that Ditto offers include:

  • Self-organizing mesh networking: Devices running Ditto-powered apps automatically and securely discover nearby peers and form wireless, distributed networks.

  • Intelligent peer-to-peer data sync: Devices in the mesh exchange data in real-time via Bluetooth Low Energy, Peer-to-Peer Wi-Fi, Local Area Network, and more.

  • Conflict-free replicated data types (CRDTs): Ditto peers each have a local database. To ensure low-bandwidth usage and concurrent edits, only the deltas, or changes, are synced

  • Distributed architecture: As the image below shows, Ditto isn’t reliant on a centralized system to synchronize data. Each device has an embedded database capable of reading, writing, and syncing deltas within the mesh. This means there is no single point of failure, such as a cloud or server.

Diagram of the Ditto Platform Architecture. Data flows into Big Peer, typically cloud or server. That data is then connected to MongoDB through a bidirectional connector.

With MongoDB and Ditto working together, developers can create robust data pipelines from mobile to cloud. MongoDB Atlas is a multi-cloud developer data platform that gives users the versatility they need to build a wide variety of applications—including mobile applications. With MongoDB Atlas, users can scale their mobile applications’ backend confidently with a foundation built for resilience, performance, and security. Additionally, MongoDB Atlas enables delivering fast and consistent mobile user experiences in any region on AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud—or replicate data across multiple regions and clouds to reach wider audiences and protect against broader outages.

Read more about Ditto at our partner catalog page.

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Away From the Keyboard: Anaiya Raisinghani, MongoDB Developer Advocate

Welcome to our new article series focused on developers and what they do when they’re not building incredible things with code and data. “Away From the Keyboard” features interviews with developers at MongoDB, discussing what they do, how they establish a healthy work-life balance, and their advice for others looking to create a more holistic approach to coding. In our first article, Anaiya Raisinghani shares her day-to-day responsibilities as a Developer Advocate at MongoDB; how she uses nonrefundable workout classes and dinner reservations to help her step away from work; and her hack for making sure that when she logs off for the day, she stays logged off. Q: What do you do at MongoDB? Anaiya: I’m a developer advocate here at MongoDB on the Technical Content team! This means I get to build super fun MongoDB tutorials for the entire developer community. I’m lucky where each day is different. If I’m researching a platform to build a tutorial, it can mean hours of research and reading up on documentation, whereas if I’m filming a YouTube video it means lots of time recording and editing. Q: What does work-life balance look like for you? Anaiya: A bad habit of mine is to get really caught up in a piece of content I’m creating and refuse to leave a certain spot until I’ve accomplished what I’ve set out to do that day. Because of this—and because I work mainly from home—if I can anticipate that I’m going to get caught up in a project, I create plans that force me to leave my desk. Some examples of these are non-refundable workout classes, drinks with friends after work (I hate being a flake), or even dinner reservations that charge you if you cancel less than 24 hours in advance. My biggest gripe is paying for something that I didn’t get anything out of. If I’m paying for a single pilates class, I will make sure I’m there trying my best on the reformer. So this has been a fantastic motivator. Being 25 and living in NYC means that my weekends are always booked, so I’m always out and about, and this allows me to not think about work on my time off. I’m also lucky enough to have a great manager and team that keep very great work-life boundaries, so I never feel guilty practicing those boundaries myself. Q: Was that balance always a priority for you or did you develop it later in your career? Anaiya: This balance was definitely something I had to develop and actively work on. I’ve always been an anxious over-achiever, and when coming into my first corporate job I thought staying overtime would be expected. We’ve all heard the phrase: “Be the first one in and the last to leave.” My manager actually used to actively tell me to log off when I first started because he would notice that my Slack was active past work hours (shoutout to Nic!). Having him and my team as a great example helped me understand that there will always be more work and to enjoy the time that you spend away from your laptop. It was also the realization that working shouldn’t be your entire life. You need to develop hobbies and build relationships within your community in order to be a happier human being. Q: What benefits has this balance given you? Anaiya: The biggest benefit this balance has given me both at work and in my life is that I’m incredibly present when I’m doing one or the other. When I’m working during the day, I’m entirely locked in and take advantage of each hour. And when I’m done with the workday, I’m actually done and can focus on my hobbies or my friends. It’s also taught me to plan in advance and it gives me a better understanding of how much work on average is expected for each project. Q: What advice would you give to a developer seeking to find a better balance? Anaiya: If you’re seeking a better balance, I recommend removing Slack from your personal phone and laptop. This way when you’re disconnected, you’re truly disconnected. Of course, there are some teams and companies that require you to be on call or working around the clock, but even then having a specific laptop or device with everything you need that is separate from your personal devices can help bridge this gap. Thank you to Anaiya Raisinghani for sharing her insights! And thanks to all of you for reading. Look for more in our new series. Interested in learning more about or connecting more with MongoDB? Join our MongoDB Community to meet other community members, hear about inspiring topics, and receive the latest MongoDB news and events. And let us know if you have any questions for our future guests when it comes to building a better work-life balance as developers. Tag us on social media: @mongodb #AwayFromTheKeyboard

September 3, 2024
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MongoDB and Partners: Building the AI Future, Together

If you’re like me, over the past year you’ve closely watched AI’s developments—and the world’s reactions to them. From infectious excitement about AI’s capabilities, to impatience with its cost and return on investment, every day has been filled with AI twists and turns. It’s been quite the roller coaster. During the ride, from time to time I’ve wondered where AI falls on the Gartner hype cycle, which gives "a view of how a technology or application will evolve over time." Have we hit the "peak of inflated expectations" only to fall into the "trough of disillusionment?" Or is the hype cycle an imperfect guide, as The Economist argues? The reality is that it takes time for any new technology—even transformative ones like AI—to take hold. And every advance, no matter how big, has had its detractors. A famous example is that of Picasso (!), who in 1968 said, “Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.” (!!) For our part, MongoDB is convinced that AI is a once-in-a-generation technology that will enhance every future application—a belief that has been reinforced by the incredible work our partners have shared at MongoDB’s 2024 events. Speeding AI development MongoDB is committed to helping organizations of all sizes succeed with AI, and one way we’re doing that is by collaborating with the MongoDB partner ecosystem to create powerful, user-friendly AI development tools and solutions. For example, Fireworks.ai —which is a member of the MongoDB AI Applications Program ecosystem —created an inference solution that hosts gen AI models and supports containerized deployments. This tool makes it easier for developers to build and deploy powerful applications with a range of easy-to-use tools and customization options. They can choose to use state-of-the-art, open-source language, image, and multimodal foundation models off the shelf, or they can customize and fine-tune models to their needs. Jointly, Fireworks.ai and MongoDB provide a solution for developers who want to leverage highly curated and optimized open-source models and combine these with their organization’s own proprietary data—and to do so with unparalleled speed and security. “MongoDB is one of the most sophisticated database providers, and it’s very easy to use,” said Benny Chen , cofounder of Fireworks.ai. "We want developers to be able to use these tools, and we want to work with providers who enable and empower developers." Nomic , another MAAP ecosystem member, also enables developers with best-in-class solutions across the entire unstructured data workflow. Their Embed offering, available through the Nomic API , allows users to vectorize large-scale datasets for use in text, image, and multimodal retrieval applications, including retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), using only their web browser. The Nomic-MongoDB solution is a highly efficient, open-weight model that developers can use to visualize the unstructured datasets they store in MongoDB Atlas . These insights help users quickly discover trends and articulate data-driven value propositions. Nomic also supported the recently announced vector quantization in MongoDB Atlas Vector Search , which reduces vector sizes while preserving performance. Last—but hardly least!—there’s our new reference architecture with MAAP partners AWS and Anthropic. Announced at MongoDB.local London , the reference architecture supports building memory-enhanced AI agents, and is designed to streamline complex processes and develop smarter, more responsive applications. For more—including a link to the code on Github— check out the MongoDB Developer Center . Making AI work for anyone and everyone The companies MongoDB partners with aren’t just making gen AI easier for developers—they’re building tools for everyone. For example, Capgemini has invested $2 billion in gen AI and is training 100,000 of its employees in the technology. GenYoda, a solution that helps insurance professionals with their daily work, is a product of this investment. GenYoda leverages MongoDB Atlas Vector Search to analyze large amounts of customer data, like policy statements, premiums, claims history, and health information. Using GenYoda, insurance professionals can quickly analyze underwriters’ reports to make informed decisions, create longitudinal health summaries, and streamline customer interactions to improve contact center efficiency. GenYoda can ingest 100,000 documents in just a few hours and respond to users’ queries in two to three seconds—a metric on par with the most widely used gen AI models. And it produces results: in one example, by using Capgemini’s solution an insurer was able to increase productivity by 15%, add new reports 25% faster (thus speeding decision-making), and reduce the manual effort of searching PDFs, increasing efficiency by 10%. Building the future of AI together So, what’s next? Honestly, I’m as curious as you are. But I’m also incredibly excited. At MongoDB, we’re active participants in the AI revolution, working to embrace the possibilities that lie ahead. The future of gen AI is bright, and I can’t wait to see what we’ll build together. To learn more about how MongoDB can accelerate your AI journey, explore the MongoDB AI Applications Program .

November 4, 2024