* No need of service installation and communication protocol. The fastest way to use it. You have direct access to the Database memory and you can manipulate objects and data in a very fast way. * Installed as Windows Service, it can be used as a network document store. You can use rest service or wcf service to access it. It's not different from the previous way to use it but you have a networking protocol and so it's not fast as the previous one. * Built using Command Query Responsibility Segregation pattern in mind. * Store data as Bson-like Documents. * Accessible via Rest * Accessible via WCF * Peer to peer synchronization and event propagation enabled. * Pluggable via Server Plugin. * Use Linq syntax for queries.

* Scalable, Fault-tolerant JSON Data Store - Self-describing JSON "documents" are automatically stored, indexed, and distributed across an elastic database cluster that can span multiple racks, data centers, or cloud providers to provide superior scalability and availability. * Multi-master Replication Across Data Centers - Cloudant increases scale and uptime, and reduces read-write latency by replicating and synchronizing readable - and writable - copies of data across multiple data centers or devices. Geo load balancers connect users with the closest replica. * Cloudant Sync for Occasionally Connected Apps - Cloudant Sync pushes database access to the farthest edge of the network —mobile devices, remote facilities, sensors, and internet-enabled goods, so that you can scale bigger and enable client apps to continue running off-line. * Lucene-powered Cloudant Search - The easiest way to build scalable search apps. Cloudant Search features ranked searching, powerful query types, results bookmarking, faceted search, fielded searching, and more. * Advanced 2D and 3D Geo-spatial indexing - Enrich your app with geo-location services using built-in geo-hashing, proximity, bounding (box, radius, ellipse, polygon), and intersection queries. * Data Protection and Security - Data access control, encryption, and data backup features enable customers in financial services, government, e-commerce, telecommunications, healthcare, and other security-minded industries to benefit from Cloudant DBaaS. * Multiple hosting options - Never worry about cloud lock-in. Cloudant supports a variety of hosting options to fit your budget and performance needs.