DataStax Partners With Microsoft, Unveils Graph Database
DataStax has augmented the latest release of its Cassandra distributed database with an open source, scale-out graph database capability. The upgrade coincides with a preview release of the latest version of Apache Cassandra that incorporates storage and developer improvements.
Supplementing its drive to push the NoSQL database further into the enterprise, Santa Clara-based DataStax also announced a cloud partnership with Microsoft (MSFT). The partners said Wednesday (Sept. 23) the collaboration would offer the DataStax enterprise platform on the Azure cloud to deliver Internet of Things, web and mobile applications in private, public and hybrid clouds.
Tony Kavanagh, DataStax's chief marketing officer, said in an interview the partners had so far lined up several joint customers. Kavanagh added that the Microsoft Azure deal would offer the flexibility of a hybrid architecture that would enable Cassandra users to launch the distributed database on-premise and then migrate to the cloud. That, he added, was one of the keys to hyper-scale deployment of Cassandra.
DataStax has demonstrated the "ability to enable enterprises to build solutions that can scale across thousands of servers which is necessary in today’s hyper-scale cloud environment," Scott Guthrie, Microsoft's executive vice president for cloud and enterprise, added in a statement announcing the partnership.
The partners said the collaboration would make it easier to move analytics and other mixed workloads between datacenters, service providers and Azure, enabling the deployment of hybrid applications that leverage resources across each platform. Hyper-scaling would be enabled via fast replication of online applications across multiple datacenters into hybrid clouds, the partners added.
Meanwhile, DataStax also rolled out its Titan graph database that includes support for online transaction (OLAP) and analytical processing query capabilities along with support for Giraph, Hadoop and Spark OLAP operations.
The Titan rollout stems from DataStax's acquisition of open source graph database developer Aurelius LLC in February 2015. The impetus behind the deal was "to apply the right database technology to the appropriate use case," the company said.
Titan is among the latest features added to the DataStax's flagship Enterprise 4.8 offering that includes production certification for Apache Spark 1.4 and deployment improvement via support for Docker application containers. The Spark upgrades are intended to expand searches to find data across distributed architectures, according to Robin Schumacher, DataStax's vice president of products.
DataStax executives added that Docker support was the most frequent customer request after the addition of a graph database capability to its enterprise version of Cassandra.
The database vendor said DataStax Enterprise 4.8 and the Titan 1.0 graph database are available now. General availability of Cassandra 3.0 is scheduled for later this year.
Also announced at the annual Cassandra Summit this week was an automated tiered storage package from Datagres for DataStax enterprise that leverages fast storage media like flash and SSDs.
According to 451 Research, a growing list of enterprises has begun deploying both Apache Cassandra and the DataStax enterprise version in production. Most notable is Netflix, which uses the NoSQL platform to deliver its subscription video-on-demand services. Elsewhere, Apple has deployed more than 75,000 Cassandra-based nodes handling an estimated 10 petabytes of data.
