Cassandra initially made its name as a NoSQL database because it was designed from the outset to support key enterprise requirements such as constant availability, resilience, and disaster recovery, as well as scalability. Many other NoSQL databases did not start from this position and only added mission-critical capabilities – if they did – later. We prefer the approach taken by the developers of Cassandra.
Moreover, in DSE there are substantial additional elements that go beyond Cassandra itself, some of which are at the feature level and some of which, such as the multi-model support, and the search and analytics capabilities, are more substantial.