You’ve Got the Data. Why Can’t Your Developers Build with it?

By Chet Kapoor, Chairman and CEO, DataStax

Customers demand experiences that fill them with the speed of life. Think of an app that lets you know exactly when your latte is ready, or one that offers you alternative flight options if you miss your connection.

Today we have the technology to build those experiences. However, organizations of all sizes still face the challenges of complexity and fragmentation. There seems to be a new database for every use case, and the data is spread across many technology silos. Developers building real-time experiences customers love need a tech stack that gives them quick and easy access to data.

The demand for apps will not decrease. IDC forecast that by 2023 there will be more than 500 million new cloud-native digital apps and services — more than the total created over the past 40 years. So how can we simplify and accelerate the way developers create real-time apps?

With an open stack of data that just works. It is based on open source technologies, allows developers to use the tools of their choice and brings together “data at rest” and “data in motion”.

Complexity sucks (living from innovation)

Greg Sly, SVP of Verizon Infrastructure and Platform Services, said recently that the biggest challenge for any business is organizing the data that has grown throughout the organization over the years.

“Everyone has data lakes, data ponds – whatever you want to call them. They have all grown organically in different business areas. Now it’s about putting that together. How do you get your arms around all the data you have?” said Sly. “There’s a lot of complexity with a lot of people with a lot of data that needs to be categorized, inventoried and controlled. Then how can we use it to create better customer experiences?”

Just as customers demand instant, intuitive experiences, developers need to have all the data they need at their fingertips. Any developer working on an important app—whether in a startup or an enterprise—needs a technology stack that will get them across the finish line as quickly as possible.

Open source encourages innovation

Open source projects bring together a bunch of really smart, diverse people who innovate like crazy. With contributors from different industries and regions, the software is hardened and reliable in countless use cases. And developers are discovering new ways to quickly solve problems together. We’ve seen this work beautifully for companies like Apple, Netflix, and VerSe.

Our show your research that a common trait of successful data-driven companies is their commitment to open source. These companies find a plethora of community-driven innovations that continually improve open source software (OSS) and provide developers with best-in-class tools to build.

Think about Apache Cassandra^®. The NoSQL database was created in 2007 by Facebook engineers who needed to find a scalable way to store and access massive amounts of data. Cassandra is constantly improving Thanks to the brilliant contributors from many different companies who continue to contribute.

Developers need the right tools

For developers, it’s all about ease of creation and time to market. Let’s look at an example. Anchori provides data services to companies that manage container ship fleets. You lead a small development team that can’t afford to waste time doing anything other than creating a better experience for their users.

“We’re a start-up company, so we need to focus on features rather than infrastructure,” said Nanna Einarsdóttir, Vice President of Engineering at Ankeri. “The path from the idea to customer feedback has to be short, we have to be agile and future-oriented.”

Data APIs go a long way in making development easier and faster. she help protect developers from distractions, such as learning how data is stored or wasting computing resources by installing and running databases locally. Most importantly, APIs allow them to connect and exchange the technology of their choice.

To make it even easier for developers to create, a data gateway can serve as an abstraction layer between an application and a database. stargate is an open source API gateway that does this while maintaining the simplicity of API management and leaving the updates to the project maintainers.

Converge data at rest and data in motion

In order to build apps that customers will hit on the fly, developers need a stack to support them everything Real time data:

• A NoSQL database like Cassandra, optimized for customer context and instant access
• And a best-in-class streaming and messaging platform that makes customer actions visible to all your apps

At DataStax, we work with developers and companies to provide an open data stack that supports real-time applications. Cassandra plays a leading role. DataStax AstraDBour Cassandra-based Database-as-a-Service makes data-at-rest easy to use and build on.

But the world is always on the move, and streaming “data on the move” captures changes on the fly. Best-of-breed streaming and messaging technologies like Apache Pulsar Enable action on real-time data as it’s being generated (e.g. when FedEx sends a notification to a buyer that their package has been delivered). In other words, it enables actions to be visible to all applications in a company in real time. That’s why DataStax Astra streamingbuilt on top of Pulsar is another key component of the open stack we are providing to businesses and developers.

Siggy.ai: From struggle to success

Here’s a quick case study of how an open real-time stack can simplify development. Siggy.ai is a real-time recommendation app that integrates with Shopify, the e-commerce platform for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems. Chang Xiao, founder and CEO of Siggy.ai, attempted to build a stack himself using a combination of AWS and open source technologies. He started looking for an always-on solution that would support specialized operations while simplifying development. Chang chose DataStax Astra DB and in a matter of weeks went from struggling with unreliable databases and server issues to providing instant, AI-powered recommendations to shoppers around the world.

Give developers what they need

At DataStax, we’re obsessed with breaking down barriers between data and developers by helping them mobilize all real-time data, build smarter applications faster, and stop worrying about scaling.

Let’s be honest. Giving developers everything they need frees them to focus on innovation and development, and the result is better apps and experiences that keep customers coming back for more.

Learn more about DataStax here.

About Chet Kapoor:

Chet is the Chairman and CEO of DataStax. He is a proven leader and innovator in the technology industry with more than 20 years of leadership experience at innovative software and cloud companies including Google, IBM, BEA Systems, WebMethods and NeXT. As Chairman and CEO of Apigee, he led company-wide initiatives to transform Apigee into a leading technology provider for digital business. Google (Apigee) is the cross-cloud API management platform operating in a multi- and hybrid-cloud world. Chet successfully took Apigee public before the company was acquired by Google in 2016. Chet earned his BS in Engineering from Arizona State University.