Developers need scalable databases more than ever for their apps. Of course, this presents a problem for those apps that become really popular and need more room to grow. It might prove too costly for some developers to traditionally scale their database, but a new startup is challenging that notion with a cloud-based database that easily scales to developers’ needs.

NuoDB announced that its new cloud-based database service has officially launched. The new system operates on what the company calls the “12 Rules for a Cloud Data Management System:”

With these rules in hand, NuoDB set to change the way developers use databases:

“After a comprehensive trial and intense listening to our 3,500 beta customers, NuoDB is ready for market,” stated Barry Morris. “Our Cloud Data Management System is a game changer. We are challenging the industry to offer comparable elastic scaling, over 1 million transactions per second performance on just $50,000 worth of commodity hardware as published in our latest benchmark report, as well as the many other cloud-friendly features found in our NuoDB Starlings release.”

For the more visual-oriented among us, here’s a helpful video that explains what makes NuoDB different from the rest:

NuoDB in 90 seconds from NuoDB on Vimeo.

NuoDB is already in use by a number of large clients who are using it to build out expansive, scalable databases. One in particular, NorthPoint, has nothing but praise for NuoDB’s service:

“NuoDB is launching a revolution in the database world by leveraging commodity storage. For the first time, an application’s storage requirements can be satisfied using a pool of shared resources, operating in a fully-elastic way, as the nature of cloud computing requires,” said Richard Cooley, Managing Partner, NorthPoint. “The database is no longer a monolithic, resource-intensive burden with limited scalability. While still maintaining the documented benefits of ACID and SQL, NuoDB is about as disruptive as it gets.”

Developers have three options to choose from when it comes to deploying NuoDB. The first is a free option that offers 2 hosts, 4GB of storage, unlimited databases and limited deployment. The second is the Pro version that supports 2 or more hosts, 16GB to multi-petabytes, full deployment and starts at $1,200 a year. Finally, there’s the developer version that offers all the benefits of Pro, but lacks deployment options. It’s free, however, so developers can just go crazy with it.

[h/t: Computer World]