Apache Cassandra vs. IBM Cloudant

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cassandra
Score 7.8 out of 10
N/A
Cassandra is a no-SQL database from Apache.N/A
IBM Cloudant
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Cloudant is an open source non-relational, distributed database service that requires zero-configuration. It's based on the Apache-backed CouchDB project and the creator of the open source BigCouch project. Cloudant's service provides integrated data management, search, and analytics engine designed for web applications. Cloudant scales your database on the CouchDB framework and provides hosting, administrative tools, analytics and commercial support for CouchDB and BigCouch. Cloudant is often…
$1
per month per GB of storage above the included 20 GB
Pricing
Apache CassandraIBM Cloudant
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Standard
$1
per month per GB of storage above the included 20 GB
Standard
$75
per month 100 reads/second ; 50 writes/second ; 5 global queries/second
Lite
Free
20 reads/second ; 10 writes/second ; 5 global queries / second ; 1 GB of storage capacity
Standard
Included
per month 20 GB of storage
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
CassandraIBM Cloudant
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Apache CassandraIBM Cloudant
Considered Both Products
Cassandra

No answer on this topic

IBM Cloudant
Chose IBM Cloudant
Cloudant stacks up very well especially since it can perform multiple functions - primarily a noSQL schema-less data base but when integrated with an MDM solution (master data management) it can also do caching services efficiently and can also be used as a graph data base. …
Chose IBM Cloudant
The technology behind Cloudant (BigCouch) is no better or worse than any of these. They are all good for different reasons. What makes Cloudant my choice against them is the hosted portion. These are all just databases that I would have to manage. Cloudant is managed for me, …
Chose IBM Cloudant
I've even worked with Cassandra, but I found Cloudant to be much simpler, easier, neat and efficient. Cassandra was not highly scalable but Cloudant was much efficient in it. Even the Monitoring and other scripts were pre-built which made it much time efficient for us.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Apache CassandraIBM Cloudant
NoSQL Databases
Comparison of NoSQL Databases features of Product A and Product B
Apache Cassandra
8.0
5 Ratings
9% below category average
IBM Cloudant
9.4
21 Ratings
7% above category average
Performance8.55 Ratings9.821 Ratings
Availability8.85 Ratings8.121 Ratings
Concurrency7.65 Ratings9.921 Ratings
Security8.05 Ratings9.821 Ratings
Scalability9.55 Ratings9.121 Ratings
Data model flexibility6.75 Ratings9.921 Ratings
Deployment model flexibility7.05 Ratings9.121 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Apache CassandraIBM Cloudant
Small Businesses
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 8.4 out of 10
Redis™*
Redis™*
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 8.4 out of 10
Redis™*
Redis™*
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 8.4 out of 10
Redis™*
Redis™*
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Apache CassandraIBM Cloudant
Likelihood to Recommend
6.0
(16 ratings)
8.1
(45 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.6
(16 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Usability
7.0
(1 ratings)
7.7
(5 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
7.0
(1 ratings)
8.6
(4 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(2 ratings)
Implementation Rating
7.0
(1 ratings)
8.2
(4 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
8.5
(3 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
9.6
(23 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Apache CassandraIBM Cloudant
Likelihood to Recommend
Apache
Apache Cassandra is a NoSQL database and well suited where you need highly available, linearly scalable, tunable consistency and high performance across varying workloads. It has worked well for our use cases, and I shared my experiences to use it effectively at the last Cassandra summit! http://bit.ly/1Ok56TK It is a NoSQL database, finally you can tune it to be strongly consistent and successfully use it as such. However those are not usual patterns, as you negotiate on latency. It works well if you require that. If your use case needs strongly consistent environments with semantics of a relational database or if the use case needs a data warehouse, or if you need NoSQL with ACID transactions, Apache Cassandra may not be the optimum choice.
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IBM
Our organization found Cloudant most suitable if One, a fixed pricing structure would make the most sense, for example in a situation where the project Cloudant is being used in makes its revenue in procurement or fixed retainer — thus the predictability of costs is paramount; Two, where you need to frequently edit the data and/or share access to the query engine to non-engineers — this is where the GUI shines.
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Pros
Apache
  • Continuous availability: as a fully distributed database (no master nodes), we can update nodes with rolling restarts and accommodate minor outages without impacting our customer services.
  • Linear scalability: for every unit of compute that you add, you get an equivalent unit of capacity. The same application can scale from a single developer's laptop to a web-scale service with billions of rows in a table.
  • Amazing performance: if you design your data model correctly, bearing in mind the queries you need to answer, you can get answers in milliseconds.
  • Time-series data: Cassandra excels at recording, processing, and retrieving time-series data. It's a simple matter to version everything and simply record what happens, rather than going back and editing things. Then, you can compute things from the recorded history.
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IBM
  • For us, performance and scalability is the key, and Cloudant DB backed by CouchDB is scalable and performant.
  • IBM Cloudant dB is very easy to provision for sandbox, development, QA as well as production.
  • Support for Java for CouchDB app server analytics enables a greater control for over developers.
  • Schema free oriented very easy to program and build applications on it.
  • We love it!!
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Cons
Apache
  • Cassandra runs on the JVM and therefor may require a lot of GC tuning for read/write intensive applications.
  • Requires manual periodic maintenance - for example it is recommended to run a cleanup on a regular basis.
  • There are a lot of knobs and buttons to configure the system. For many cases the default configuration will be sufficient, but if its not - you will need significant ramp up on the inner workings of Cassandra in order to effectively tune it.
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IBM
  • It was only after we went with the cloud-based solution that IBM rolled out an on-premise version.
  • We found that a 3rd-party ODBC driver was required for a few applications that needed to pull data out of Cloudant.
  • The sales process was difficult because the salesperson we used was not as versed on Cloudant as I had hoped.
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Likelihood to Renew
Apache
I would recommend Cassandra DB to those who know their use case very well, as well as know how they are going to store and retrieve data. If you need a guarantee in data storage and retrieval, and a DB that can be linearly grown by adding nodes across availability zones and regions, then this is the database you should choose.
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IBM
the flexibility of NoSQL allow us to modify and upgrade our apps very fast and in a convenient way. Having the solution hosted by IBM is also giving us the chance to focus on features and the improvement of our apps. It's one thing less to be worried about
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Usability
Apache
It’s great tool but it can be complicated when it comes administration and maintenance.
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IBM
It's mostly just a straight forward API to a data store. I knock one off for the full text search thing, but I don't need it much anyways. Also, the dashboard UI they give is pretty nice to use. It provides syntax-highlighting for writing views and queries are easy to test. I wish other DBs had a UI like this.
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Reliability and Availability
Apache
No answers on this topic
IBM
it is a highly available solution in the IBM cloud portfolio and hence we have never had any issues with the data base being available - we also do continuous replication to be on the safer side just in case some thing goes awry. We also perform twice a year disaster recovery tests.
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Performance
Apache
No answers on this topic
IBM
very easy to get started and is very developer friendly given that it uses couchDB analytics. It is a cloud based solution and hence there is no hardware investment in a server and staging the server to get started and the associated delays/bureaucracy involved to get started. Good documentation is also available.
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Support Rating
Apache
Sometimes instead giving straight answer, we ‘re getting transfered to talk professional service.
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IBM
Very happy by the commitment given by the team which has been really good over the last 7 years of usage.
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Online Training
Apache
No answers on this topic
IBM
online resources are good enough to understand but there is nothing like testing. In our case, we discovered some not documented behavior that we take in count now. Also, the experience in NodeJs is critical. Also, take in count that most of the "good practices" with cloudant are not in online courses but in blogs and pages from independent developers
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Implementation Rating
Apache
No answers on this topic
IBM
  • Test the architecture on CouchDB helped us to address initial design flaws.
  • The migration to Cloudant as such was very painless.
  • We have migrate our replication system to Cloudant Android Sync for mobile devices.
  • We have regular informal contact with the Cloudant leadership to discuss our use cases and implementation strategies.
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Alternatives Considered
Apache
We evaluated MongoDB also, but don't like the single point failure possibility. The HBase coupled us too tightly to the Hadoop world while we prefer more technical flexibility. Also HBase is designed for "cold"/old historical data lake use cases and is not typically used for web and mobile applications due to its performance concern. Cassandra, by contrast, offers the availability and performance necessary for developing highly available applications. Furthermore, the Hadoop technology stack is typically deployed in a single location, while in the big international enterprise context, we demand the feasibility for deployment across countries and continents, hence finally we are favor of Cassandra
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IBM
The feature-set, including security, is very comparable. Overall, IBM's services added to the product are mature and stable, although product support and engineers could be a little better. Global availability is improving, and Disaster Recover Capabilities are great. Overall, it's very comparable to MongoDB as a DBaaS offer, available globally and with great documentation.
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Scalability
Apache
No answers on this topic
IBM
The service scales incredibly well. As you would expect from CloudDB and IBM combination. The only reason I wouldn't score it a 10 is the fact that document trees can get nested and nested very quickly if you are attempting to do very complex datasets. Which makes your code that much more complex to deal. Its very possible we could find a solution to this problem with better database planning to begin with, but one of the reasons we chose a service over a self-hosted solution was so we could set it up quick and forget about it. So we weren't going to dedicate a team to architecture optimization.
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Return on Investment
Apache
  • I have no experience with this but from the blogs and news what I believe is that in businesses where there is high demand for scalability, Cassandra is a good choice to go for.
  • Since it works on CQL, it is quite familiar with SQL in understanding therefore it does not prevent a new employee to start in learning and having the Cassandra experience at an industrial level.
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IBM
  • IBM Cloudant is very secure and we never have to worry about losing data/unauthorized access
  • It is one of the best data backup system and works well
  • Global availability means it is easy to connect to the nearest data center and this reduces load time which is great.
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ScreenShots