With the advent of Cloud technology, many paradigms started to change, like the way the industry tackles issues related data security and user privacy. Even the most conservative and traditional organizations have been forced to start adapting to this new technology, and are trying to use one of the many existent cloud platforms.

There are numerous benefits offered by cloud computing, both to end users and companies of all sizes and shapes. For small companies, they are a good option because it can minimize licensing software, and for big companies that want to expand their business, cloud computing can help improve accessibility without the need to spend too much money on hardware.

Moving to the field of data, a few years ago, managers and even developers assumed that nearly all data should be stored in a Relational Database Management System (RDBMS). Some years ago, it was unthinkable to run a production system that kept all of its data within memory, but now, due to the continuous decline in the prices of RAM, modern in-memory products are emerging such as big data analytics tools (in-memory computation) and in-memory data grids. One such in-memory data grid system is Infinispan.

Infinispan is an open source data grid platform distributed by JBoss, written in Java; it exposes a JSR-107 compatible cache interface in which you can store objects.

This first chapter launches you on a tour of this technology by focusing on fundamentals.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics: