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Today, we announced that Redis Labs is becoming Redis, dropping “Labs” from our company name. The change signals the maturity of the company and the Redis open source project, to which we have continuously contributed since our founding in 2011 and which we’ve sponsored since 2015. We explain the motivation for this move in the official announcement and what we aspire for “One Redis” to mean in this short video.
To provide further clarity on this change you are invited to read the following Q&As.
We’re excited to continue working together across the Redis community with one goal. Go Redis!
Ofer & Yiftach
We’re dropping “Labs” from our company name and branding, a reflection of who we are and what we deliver: Redis, pure and simple.
Redis is the world’s fastest, most-loved database for building real-time applications, at scale, across every industry and use case. We’ve always believed in Redis and contributed to the evolution of open source Redis from the outset of founding the company; helping develop it from a popular caching system into the leading real-time data platform that it is today. It’s proven, scalable, and beloved by developers, and an essential component of the modern app stack. This change demonstrates the natural progression of Redis we’ve sought to deliver in making it an essential infrastructure for modern apps.
Going forward we will specifically indicate if we refer to Redis the company or Redis the open-source project. Additionally, while the open-source project continues to be documented on redis.io, the company’s website will be redis.com.
Our company began contributing to the open-source Redis project shortly after we were founded in 2011, which was less than 2 years after the creation of Redis. In 2015 we started sponsoring the project and Salvatore Sanfilippo, Redis’s creator, joined Redis Labs as its lead open source maintainer. Sanfilippo stepped back from being the sole maintainer of the project in June 2020, while remaining on the company advisory board.
Additionally, over the years the company has developed an expanded set of data models for Redis, complemented by powerful search and programmability engines. We have also created RedisRaft, to be released with Redis 7.0, which will make Redis a strongly consistent database. These enhanced capabilities have expanded the original caching and session management use cases of Redis to a broad range of new possibilities for developers, companies, and partners to cover the real-time needs of their applications.
Our sole focus is continuing to lead the evolution of Redis as the leading real-time data platform by working across developers, customers, and partners who love and want to grow Redis.
Redis is deeply rooted in our DNA. We’ve been fostering and growing the open-source project for 10 years alongside Salvatore Sanfilippo, through contributions to the code base on a regular basis long before we launched our own managed service.
There is no change to the way open source Redis is licensed, managed, and controlled. Redis is and will remain BSD licensed. The governance model introduced last year also remains the same. This governance has not only enabled us to effectively tackle the technical challenges that the Redis project entails, but also maintain its enduring popularity with developers.
The open-source core team is doing a great job and we’ve seen progress in getting much-needed improvements incorporated into Redis and that ultimately benefits its users. The first release under their direction, Redis 6.2, was released in March 2021 and featured contributions of more than 35 community members. To put into perspective, the community participation in Redis OSS has seen a 56% YoY increase in PRs created and 156% PRs closed on the Git project. There’s also been an 86% YoY increase in Redis project Git authors.
This is reflected in Redis’s continued popularity with developers. Redis was just named by Stack Overflow developers’ “Most Loved Database” for the fifth consecutive year, has been found by Sumo Logic’s analysis to be the #1 database on AWS for two consecutive years, named the #1 database technology to adopt by CNCF End User Community, and the #1 Database for Container Images and Kubernetes StatefulSets according to DataDog’s Container Report.
Developers have been and will continue to be our focus. Redis was designed to solve the need for a really fast and simple in-memory database. We took it upon ourselves to continue and foster that vision through the developer community with programs and initiatives that support the open-source project such as the annual RedisConf event, Redis University, hackathons, and much more. We stay committed to this vision going forward and aren’t introducing any changes to how developers can learn, use, and build with Redis. Redis.io remains the central hub for the open-source project, and we offer more developer resources to create unique real-time apps and the ability to engage with other creators on developer.redis.com.
Nothing is changing about the code or the licensing. You will see a different logo on our website and a registered company name on contracts. We will continue making investments to make Redis more accessible and easy to use.
Bringing greater alignment between the Redis core technology and enterprise product suite is a win-win for our customers. It will allow us to continue building Redis into an enterprise-grade platform, and in turn deliver availability, flexibility, and even greater performance to customers’ applications, in real-time.
It won’t in any way—we’re just dropping “Labs” from our name. Our partners are a valuable part of the Redis ecosystem and have helped make it the most loved and one of the most popular databases. Nothing is changing about the code or its licensing. This change will enable customers to more clearly understand a direct Redis offering versus a partner offering leveraging Redis. We are committed to driving alignment and opportunities across the developer community, customers, and partners to continue Redis’s growth trajectory.
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