Should cloud database be centralized or distributed?

What is the most suitable noSQL database strategy for startups? do cloud based storage support index / views or equivalent ?

• true distributed vs manually maintain replicas does I/O performance need to be critical in an startup ( small to slow growing data as against already big data ) name-spaces, access control and security for an SaaS based application consideration in choosing the right database If cloud based storage is one of the solutions, cost factors compared to databases hosted on dedicated hardware or leverage third party technology to maintain index's  views for cloud based storage

• Answer:

  Simple answer may be MongoDB. Precise answer depends on details. NoSQL no longer means No SQL. Today it encompasses different types of structured data storage: Document Store GraphDB, Key-value Store (mem, disk, hierarchical, ordered & eventually consistent) , Multi-value, ObjectDB, Tabular and Tuple store. Requirements like big-data, name space, access control, security .. those details look like you need a scalable cloud file system. You may look at GlusterFS also to your store BigData.