1. A computer system, comprising: at least one processor; a non-transitory computer readable storage medium tangibly storing data; a software application executable by the at least one processor and programmed to make use of the data; and off-heap memory, dynamically allocated and directly managed by a memory manager, such that the off-heap memory is perceivable by the software application as being a part of local application tier memory and manageable independent of other memory managers of the computer system and of an operating system running on the computer system, wherein the off-heap memory is scalable up to a size of the computer system's memory, upon direction from the memory manager, wherein the off-heap memory provides for the software application a terabyte-sized window to terabyte-sized data, and wherein the memory manager is configured to manage at least some returned data containers from the off-heap memory as a single coherent logical address space storing data keys and values, with a single data container in the off-heap memory storing a hash table with metadata information linking data keys to values.