How to Unlock the Full Power of Apache Cassandra®

Open source software has become a natural go-to as enterprises seek to scale efficiently and affordably. Drawn by the allure of frictionless acquisitions, vendorless negotiations, and the open source appeal to potential new talent, companies of all types and sizes now use open source technology to drive growth and innovation.

Likewise, Apache Cassandra® adoption has increased significantly since Facebook open sourced the project in 2008. Designed for the modern world, Cassandra enables organizations to build transformative applications that have outgrown the capabilities of traditional relational databases. As a result, companies that move to Cassandra can increase employee productivity and adapt to unexpectedly high traffic without fear of performance degradation, as well as implement new, game-changing use cases such as providing more personalized customer experiences.

While Cassandra is a powerful NoSQL database, there can be some barriers to adoption as well as hidden costs associated with maintaining and supporting the open source software.

Many organizations that would like to use Cassandra find themselves in a tricky position because there aren’t enough skilled NoSQL developers to keep pace with demand. One recent survey, for example, revealed that only 8% of respondents believe that there’s enough Cassandra-ready talent on the market. Other issues with Cassandra uptake include rising maintenance costs, ad hoc support, and lack of internal expertise, leading enterprises to end up spending way more than they anticipated on something they saw as a cost-cutter.

The Easiest Way to Unlock the Full Power of Cassandra

To get the most out of Cassandra, many organizations hire and train in-house talent (or, more likely, hire in-house talent and have them train themselves).

But most organizations will only be able to unlock the full potential of Cassandra by adding significant cost, complexity, and administrative burden to the mix—and that’s only in a best-case scenario. Who knows how long it might take for a team to learn their way around Cassandra and start building effectively on top of it?

This is precisely why we created DataStax Distribution of Apache Cassandra, a production-ready implementation of the database that is 100% compatible with open source Cassandra and fully supported by DataStax. The solution enables companies to unlock the full power of Cassandra without having to incur the expenses, risk, or unnecessary administrative complexities associated with adopting open source technology.

DataStax Distribution of Apache Cassandra: Key Features

Here’s what you can expect to get right out of the box when you choose DataStax Distribution of Apache Cassandra:

1. Production-ready Cassandra

The software is ready for production right away thanks to a rigorous QA and testing process. Since hotfixes, bug escalations, and upgrades are included, time to resolution accelerates and maintenance costs decrease. Also—you get the added value of the Apache Kafka Connector, the DataStax Bulk Loader, and Docker images for development.

2. 100% open source compatibility

At DataStax, we love all things open source. In fact, we also contribute to several other open source projects, including Apache TinkerPop®.

To this end, we’re pleased to announce that DataStax Distribution of Apache Cassandra is 100% compatible with open source Cassandra from both a storage and application perspective. As a result, you get to use stable, production-ready software without getting locked into any one distribution.

3. Support from Cassandra experts

Instead of relying on a motley crew of systems integrators, in-house resources, and third-party vendors spread out across time zones, companies that use DataStax Distribution of Apache Cassandra can choose 24x7 or 8x5 support from the team behind the majority of commits to the Cassandra project. This makes it easier to meet SLAs while reducing support costs.

Also—in many cases companies already have both Cassandra and DataStax Enterprise installed, but still require support for Cassandra. DataStax Distribution of Apache Cassandra enables these companies to take advantage of one support framework across their entire Cassandra implementation without compromising on the benefits of the open source software.

4. Free educational tools and resources

Organizations that use DataStax Distribution of Apache Cassandra also benefit from DataStax’s robust educational resources that are freely available to customers through DataStax Academy.

Developers who need help operating, configuring, and using Cassandra will find a wealth of resources there designed to enable more effective Cassandra utilization. DataStax also provides a rich set of tools and hosts events—like DataStax Accelerate, the world’s premier Apache Cassandra conference—to help teams become even more productive with the NoSQL database.

There’s no sense in making it any harder than it has to be to use Cassandra productively. Instead of starting from scratch and managing everything in-house, many of today’s leading organizations are starting to move to DataStax Distribution of Apache Cassandra. That way, they get a powerful, production-ready Cassandra distribution with way less hassle and for a lot less money.

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