Back to Basics: Why InterSystems?

InterSystems has been at the forefront of database technology since its inception, pioneering innovations that consistently outperform competitors like Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft. By focusing on an efficient kernel design and embracing a no-compromise approach to data performance, InterSystems has carved out a niche in mission-critical applications, ensuring reliability, speed, and scalability.

A History of Technical Excellence

During its earlier years, InterSystems distinguished itself through its groundbreaking database architecture, which addressed inefficiencies in legacy relational database systems. While competitors like Oracle relied on rigid relational designs, InterSystems introduced a multi-model database powered by its proprietary kernel. This innovation allowed data to be handled as tables, objects, multidimensional arrays, or key-value pairs—all within a unified database engine. The result was a significant performance improvement for transactional workloads compared to conventional databases. These capabilities laid the foundation for InterSystems' dominance in industries such as healthcare and finance, where systems must handle vast amounts of data without compromising speed or accuracy.

Staying Competitive Against Industry Giants

Despite competition from publicly traded companies with vast resources, such as AWS and Microsoft, InterSystems remains a trusted provider for mission-critical applications. This enduring trust stems from its technical superiority and a laser-focused commitment to its customers.

1. A Kernel Built for Reliability and Low Latency At the core of InterSystems IRIS is its kernel, a high-performance engine designed to maximize speed, reliability, and scalability. Unlike competitors who rely on external layers or middleware for performance scaling, the IRIS kernel integrates key features like data indexing, journaling, and caching natively, ensuring low-latency performance under extreme workloads.
   • Journaling and Crash Recovery: Advanced journaling techniques in the IRIS kernel minimize recovery times, enabling systems to restore to a consistent state within seconds, even in catastrophic scenarios. Competing solutions often suffer from slower recovery times, which can result in costly downtime.
   • Scalability with ECP and Sharding: InterSystems IRIS outperforms its rivals by enabling horizontal scalability with Enterprise Cache Protocol (ECP) and data sharding. This allows organizations like Epic Systems, a healthcare software giant, to manage millions of daily healthcare transactions reliably.
2. Trusted for Mission-Critical Applications Industries like healthcare and finance, where failure is not an option, continue to rely on InterSystems. For example, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and Credit Suisse trust IRIS to deliver consistent, high-performance data handling. This trust is underpinned by InterSystems’ ability to process millions of transactions per second with deterministic latency, far outperforming AWS’s Aurora in transaction-heavy use cases.
3. Customer-Centric Innovation Unlike publicly traded competitors, InterSystems reinvests heavily in research and development instead of focusing on shareholder returns. This focus has driven innovations like IntegratedML, which embeds machine learning directly into the database, and Multi-Model Data Access, which eliminates the need for costly ETL pipelines.

Positioned for the Age of AI

As artificial intelligence reshapes industries, the demand for high-performance, scalable data systems has reached unprecedented levels. InterSystems IRIS, with its optimized kernel and inherent scalability, is uniquely positioned to meet these demands.

1. Speed and Low-Latency Performance In AI applications, where milliseconds matter, InterSystems IRIS excels by leveraging in-memory processing and intelligent indexing to minimize latency. Benchmarks reveal that InterSystems IRIS was between 2.7 and 3.1 times more efficient than AWS Aurora MySQL and the efficiency advantage grew larger as the number of nodes in the cluster increased. .
2. Effortless Scalability for Compute-Intensive Workloads InterSystems IRIS supports vertical scaling for high-core systems and horizontal scaling through sharding and ECP. This architecture allowed Mass General Brigham to scale its healthcare data platform, enabling seamless integration of over 100 million patient records across its network of hospitals and clinics. By leveraging InterSystems IRIS, Mass General Brigham achieved rapid query performance and real-time insights, critical for clinical decision support and population health analytics.
3. Co-Located Data for AI and Analytics By integrating operational and analytical workloads within the same environment, InterSystems eliminates the need for ETL processes that introduce latency and complexity. This capability allows AI models to access live datasets instantly, accelerating workflows in industries like supply chain and manufacturing.
4. AI-Ready Integration InterSystems IRIS integrates seamlessly with Python, IntegratedML, and popular AI frameworks like TensorFlow and PyTorch. These integrations enable organizations to deploy AI models directly within the database environment, reducing overhead and latency compared to traditional approaches that require moving data to external systems.

Hard Numbers That Matter

• Performance Benchmarks: Test results demonstrate a large advantage in performance for InterSystems IRIS when compared to AWS Aurora MySQL, MariaDB, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle and PostgreSQL. The insert rate for InterSystems IRIS was between 1.7 times and 9 times faster than for the other systems. The data query rate for InterSystems IRIS was between 1.1 times and 600 times faster than for the other systems.
• Scalability: The IRIS kernel supports the ingestion of millions of transactions per second, making it ideal for global enterprises.
• Real-World Impact: Over 1 billion health records globally are managed using InterSystems technology, demonstrating unmatched scalability and reliability.

Conclusion

InterSystems’ unique kernel design and multi-decade commitment to innovation have cemented its place as a leader in mission-critical systems. Whether handling healthcare transactions for Epic, powering financial systems for Harris Associates, or enabling real-time AI applications, InterSystems IRIS consistently delivers unmatched speed, reliability, and scalability. As industries embrace the computational demands of AI, InterSystems remains the trusted partner for organizations that cannot afford to compromise.