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If I was Datastax I would be scared of Scylla. They have momentum and they are one of the best engineering teams around outside of top teams at Google/FB etc.

by hendzen 10y ago

BinaryIdiot 10y ago
Maybe I'm too far out of the loop but while they both provide enterprise Cassandra they both also offer a bunch of different products so in some product categories there may be plenty of room for both of them. I gotta say though, going to each of their websites, and Scylla was very straight forward "here's what we provide" and I understand it pretty quickly. Datastax? I...still don't entirely understand what they offer. It's all loaded with enterprise buzz words.
- digitalzombie 10y ago
  Yeah they're pretty buzzword ish. But last I heard they bought in the titandb guy to build their own enterprise graph database on top of cassandra. So they got that going for them.
  - BinaryIdiot 10y ago
    Oh I forgot about that! That's a big thing going for them. I feel like half the projects I've worked on in the recent past could benefit from a graph database.
threeseed 10y ago
I wouldn't. Enterprise companies care about performance, sure. But far, far less than they care about being on a supported platform. DataStax has done the hard yards over the years to prove themselves capable of supporting Cassandra. SycllaDB has no street cred at all. So SycllaDB might make some inroads in performance critical startups and web companies. But that is likely to be about it.
- manigandham 10y ago
  Aren't you being too dismissive? All database companies have to start from somewhere, Datastax was brand new once too. This funding is part of the story to make sure Scylla can support customers but they have a much better foundation to build upon with this database tech.
- hendzen 10y ago
  Enterprise companies also care about OPEX.. i.e. if they have an internal SLA that can be met with a 100 node C* cluster or with 10 Scylla nodes, that will matter quite a bit.
  - threeseed 10y ago
    Enterprise companies spend millions on database projects and majority of the cost comes from Professional Services and Consultancies engaged in data migration etc. So cost of the product itself is never the driving factor especially when the cost will be so substantially less already than Teradata or Oracle. And the most important part of a database is confidence. You need to be able to trust that when you have a Production outage IT is able to talk to someone to fix it. DataStax has proven capable of meeting that task. It's very difficult for a second tier player to do the same especially with Cassandra being such a niche product.
    - true_religion 10y ago
      Doing more with the same budget is a big thing within any department. It's a way to show 'efficiency' thus garner points for promotion. Overall company budget for a technology group is besides the point---individual departments are budget constrained and being able to say I saved 30% last quarter, and whilst handing 200% more operations is something any manager would love.
    - hendzen 10y ago
      I used to work for a database company and have been involved in the purchasing side of database support contracts. Professional Services/Consulting is a small revenue line (and TCO component) relative to support licensing. It also has considerably lower margins. Scylla is an upstart... but I would not call them a second tier player. DataStax is already trying and failing [0, 1] to incorporate ideas from Scylla in to their product. Yes, support and SLAs matter. And this round of funding will go a long way toward helping Scylla build out those parts of their business. [0] - https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-10989 https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-10989 [1] - https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-8520 https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-8520

If I was Datastax I would be scared of Scylla. They have momentum and they are one of the best engineering teams around outside of top teams at Google/FB etc.

by hendzen 10y ago

If I was Datastax I would be scared of Scylla. They have momentum and they are one of the best engineering teams around outside of top teams at Google/FB etc.

BinaryIdiot 10y ago

Maybe I'm too far out of the loop but while they both provide enterprise Cassandra they both also offer a bunch of different products so in some product categories there may be plenty of room for both of them. I gotta say though, going to each of their websites, and Scylla was very straight forward "here's what we provide" and I understand it pretty quickly. Datastax? I...still don't entirely understand what they offer. It's all loaded with enterprise buzz words.

digitalzombie 10y ago
Yeah they're pretty buzzword ish. But last I heard they bought in the titandb guy to build their own enterprise graph database on top of cassandra. So they got that going for them.
- BinaryIdiot 10y ago
  Oh I forgot about that! That's a big thing going for them. I feel like half the projects I've worked on in the recent past could benefit from a graph database.

threeseed 10y ago

I wouldn't. Enterprise companies care about performance, sure. But far, far less than they care about being on a supported platform. DataStax has done the hard yards over the years to prove themselves capable of supporting Cassandra. SycllaDB has no street cred at all. So SycllaDB might make some inroads in performance critical startups and web companies. But that is likely to be about it.

manigandham 10y ago
Aren't you being too dismissive? All database companies have to start from somewhere, Datastax was brand new once too. This funding is part of the story to make sure Scylla can support customers but they have a much better foundation to build upon with this database tech.
hendzen 10y ago
Enterprise companies also care about OPEX.. i.e. if they have an internal SLA that can be met with a 100 node C* cluster or with 10 Scylla nodes, that will matter quite a bit.
- threeseed 10y ago
  Enterprise companies spend millions on database projects and majority of the cost comes from Professional Services and Consultancies engaged in data migration etc. So cost of the product itself is never the driving factor especially when the cost will be so substantially less already than Teradata or Oracle. And the most important part of a database is confidence. You need to be able to trust that when you have a Production outage IT is able to talk to someone to fix it. DataStax has proven capable of meeting that task. It's very difficult for a second tier player to do the same especially with Cassandra being such a niche product.
  - true_religion 10y ago
    Doing more with the same budget is a big thing within any department. It's a way to show 'efficiency' thus garner points for promotion. Overall company budget for a technology group is besides the point---individual departments are budget constrained and being able to say I saved 30% last quarter, and whilst handing 200% more operations is something any manager would love.
  - hendzen 10y ago
    I used to work for a database company and have been involved in the purchasing side of database support contracts. Professional Services/Consulting is a small revenue line (and TCO component) relative to support licensing. It also has considerably lower margins. Scylla is an upstart... but I would not call them a second tier player. DataStax is already trying and failing [0, 1] to incorporate ideas from Scylla in to their product. Yes, support and SLAs matter. And this round of funding will go a long way toward helping Scylla build out those parts of their business. [0] - https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-10989 https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-10989 [1] - https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-8520 https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-8520