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As businesses increasingly focus on leveraging AI and analytics, data infrastructure companies are striving to eliminate barriers to their offerings, aiming to provide maximum return on investment for teams intent on extracting value from their data. Following the initiatives from platforms such as Snowflake, Neo4j is also stepping up with significant advancements in graph technology.
Recently, Neo4j, under the leadership of Emil Eifrem, revealed a substantial upgrade to its fully managed database service, AuraDB. This upgraded service now integrates generative AI capabilities and boasts a 15-fold increase in read capacity, while also enhancing security and compliance measures. Additionally, the introduction of a cost-effective, self-serve version of the product is aimed at facilitating broader access to graph databases for enterprises, especially for those exploring generative AI and advanced analytics functionalities.
“Today’s announcement signifies a critical milestone in our objective to equip enterprises with the most powerful, scalable, and efficient graph database management solution in the market. These advancements are designed to reduce the barriers to adopting graph technology and GraphRAG for generative AI, allowing organizations to explore new possibilities with their data and business operations,” stated Sudhir Hasbe, the company’s Chief Product Officer.
What exactly is AuraDB?
AuraDB is Neo4j’s cloud-based graph database service that facilitates rapid queries and real-time analytics by focusing on the relationships within data. It allows enterprises to visualize their data similarly to sketching ideas on a whiteboard, where information is stored in nodes representing entities and concepts, thus capturing contextual links. This graphical structure enables users to uncover complex relationships and patterns, allowing for insights to be derived in milliseconds as opposed to conventional relational databases that may take considerably longer.
With this latest update, Neo4j is enhancing the user-friendly experience of building applications on their managed graph database.
New features: Generative AI copilot and no/low code dashboard builder
The innovative features include the introduction of a generative AI copilot within the Aura console, powered by OpenAI’s large language model (LLM). This tool provides users with instantaneous suggestions, optimizations, and clarifications to facilitate the creation of Cypher queries, streamlining the process of gathering insights.
“Users can input a natural language query and receive custom search phrases or Cypher code tailored by the LLM. The LLM is informed by the current database schema, ensuring it generates contextually relevant suggestions. Each request incorporates the original query along with a description of the schema and examples for guidance, allowing users to refine the generated code before execution,” Hasbe explained further.
Neo4j is also launching NeoDash, an interactive dashboard builder that requires little to no coding knowledge. This tool enables users to swiftly create various visualizations, such as maps, graphs, and charts, facilitating a deeper understanding of their data. For example, it can be utilized to illustrate active security risks or provide a real-time view of supply chain logistics.
Neo4j NeoDash visually represents security risks to enhance predictive analysis.
In addition to these user-centric features, AuraDB will see upgrades in security, auditing, and compliance capabilities, including customer-managed encryption keys and the ability to stream and audit security logs in real time. Importantly, the upgrade significantly enhances read capacity, allowing the database to handle 15 times more real-time data without increasing latency. This improvement comes from the integration of read-only secondary databases to AuraDB.
“This capability effectively distributes read-heavy workloads across secondary instances, making it ideal for applications with high read-to-write ratios. It guarantees consistent performance as data volumes increase by smartly routing read requests to the appropriate database instances,” noted Hasbe.
Significant growth for graph technologies
The announcement of the AuraDB upgrade is timely, as graph technologies are experiencing increased acceptance in the marketplace. According to Gartner, these technologies are predicted to be integral to 80% of data and analytics workloads by 2025, a surge from just 10% in 2021. The report highlights graph technology’s pivotal role in advancing the development of high-performing retrieval augmented generation (RAG) AI applications.
The challenges faced by RAG techniques in business contexts, such as issues related to response accuracy and completeness, can be addressed through the use of Knowledge Graphs (KGs). These established technologies effectively encapsulate data and metadata from diverse documents, offering a mechanism to enhance the precision of responses in RAG applications.
Neo4j’s strategy is clear — to capitalize on the growing demand through refined and accessible solutions.
To bolster the growth of AuraDB, Neo4j is introducing a new tier called AuraDB Business Critical, which mirrors the features of its premier offering but is offered at a 20% reduction in price due to its self-service nature. The original flagship plan is now designated as AuraDB Virtual Dedicated Cloud, featuring dedicated infrastructure tailored to specific networking requirements.
Over the last three years, Hasbe indicated that 30-40% of new customers have opted for Aura. Overall, Neo4j has secured over 1,700 clients and more than 300,000 developers, establishing itself as a prominent provider of scalable graph technologies.
Source
venturebeat.com