Riak CS 1.5, the latest release of the open source distributed NoSQL database for cloud storage from Basho, is out this week, with new features aimed at enhancing performance, scalability, Amazon S3 compatibility and more.

The newest iteration of the company's distributed storage platform is available as a community-supported version, called simply Riak CS 1.5. In addition, the company offers Riak CS Enterprise, which provides extra features, including storage replication across multiple data centers, dedicated monitoring and around-the-clock professional support.

As a point release, Riak CS (the CS stands for "cloud storage," by the way) 1.5 brings updates that are largely incremental in nature, yet still innovative in the maturing world of NoSQL storage. Key enhancements in the new version include:

Basho hopes its NoSQL distributed storage platform will continue to attract enterprises in need of highly scalable cloud-based storage that is also stable and easy to administer. "Companies dealing with large amounts of unstructured data like videos, images and documents are adopting cloud object storage so that data is highly available through a seamlessly scalable architecture," according to the company. "Businesses in industries such as broadcasting and telecommunications are relying on stability, integration functionality and performance of Riak CS to efficiently store, organize and access data while making it simple to manage."