SANTA CLARA, Calif. – March 4, 2019 – DataStax, the leading provider of the always-on, active everywhere distributed hybrid cloud database built on Apache Cassandra™, today announced Cisco Systems is using DataStax Enterprise to power the new Cisco Commerce Renewals platform, a faster and more intuitive ecommerce website that enables distributors, partners, resellers, and direct customers to quote, order, and manage service contracts and software subscriptions.

Click to Tweet: Learn why @Cisco replaced legacy RDBMS with @DataStax to power the Cisco Renewals platform- its fast, #alwayson ecommerce application with zero downtime https://bit.ly/2EB9Aot

Cisco’s previous renewals platform, written years ago in Java with a relational database management system (RDBMS) backend, suffered from frequent and lengthy downtime and required significant person-hours for quarterly updates. Cisco needed a cloud-native compatible platform and a highly reliable database that was easy to migrate to, delivered fast searches, and supported an active-active data center model.

With DataStax, Cisco’s Commerce Renewals platform is an extremely fast, always-on application that has experienced zero downtime over more than two years. DataStax has also eliminated the need for the resource-intensive quarterly updates, saving hundreds of person-hours a year. Approximately one million quotes are created in the new system each quarter, with high-dollar revenue running through it during the same period.

“The reliability of DataStax as part of our cloud technology stack has completely eliminated database downtime and has contributed significantly to one of Cisco’s key revenue engines being always up and working. This gives our partners and customers an enhanced experience,” said Charulata Sharma, Senior Engineer at Cisco Systems. “Everything is run in a zero-downtime fashion.”

Cisco selected DataStax as a part of its journey toward a modern cloud environment, which required a technology stack overhaul. The company wanted to move away from relational databases, which proved difficult to use in a cloud environment across multiple data centers. With this in mind, Cisco chose DataStax, the always-on, scalable data platform built on Apache Cassandra, as its transactional database, because of its speed and simplicity. (DataStax Enterprise 6 delivers three times the throughput with up to ten times reduction in latency as compared to Apache Cassandra, according to a 2018 performance benchmark commissioned by DataStax.)

"Our tech stack has to be agile and flexible enough to move clouds at a moment's notice. We have to design it to allow that to happen tomorrow if we need to," concluded Sharma.

Today, all details related to customer renewal quotes and orders are stored in DataStax Enterprise. The new technology stack also includes DataStax OpsCenter for visual management and monitoring of DataStax, Apache Spark™ for analytics, Elasticsearch for search, and Apache Kafka® for data streaming. In the future, the new technology stack will play a critical role in enabling Cisco to manage a new recurring revenue model.

“Cisco Commerce Renewals platform is the perfect example of the power of DataStax to easily integrate with other foundational cloud technologies that are also helping to create the enterprise of the future,” said Steve Rowland, EVP and President at DataStax. “Our always-on, active-everywhere database creates a highly reliable, extremely fast data solution that takes full advantage of hybrid and multi-cloud environments to help our customers deliver on their most complex digital transformation and customer experience initiatives.”

Learn more:

To learn more about DataStax and DataStax Enterprise, please join DataStax at DataStax Accelerate,  the world's premier Apache Cassandra™ conference, May 21-23, 2019, in the Washington D.C. area. To register, please visit: www.datastax.com/accelerate

About DataStax

DataStax delivers the always-on, active-everywhere distributed hybrid cloud database built on Apache Cassandra™. The foundation for personalized, real-time applications at scale, DataStax Enterprise makes it easy for enterprises to exploit hybrid and multi-cloud environments via a seamless data layer that eliminates the issues that typically come with deploying applications across multiple on-premises data centers and/or multiple public clouds. Our product also gives businesses full data visibility, portability, and control, allowing them to retain strategic ownership of their most valuable asset in a hybrid/multi cloud world. We help many of the world’s leading brands across industries transform their businesses through an enterprise data layer that eliminates data silos and cloud vendor lock-in while powering modern, mission-critical applications. For more information, visit www.DataStax.com and follow us on Twitter @DataStax.