Acunu self-service

Acunu has recently released version of Acunu Analytics. In case you’ve missed my previous article on Acunu Analytics, it provides what can best be described as streaming OLAP (online analytic processing) for Cassandra database implementations.

The main feature of this release is self-service. Previously you had to understand the underlying data structure in order to create queries but now you just define your query, using drag-and-drop techniques and the software will auto-create your cube for you. Moreover, it will backfill that cube with historical data for you if required. There are also facilities for doing things like enriching your data: for example, recognising that this record is from a gold customer.

There are a variety of other new features but the main thing is self-service and there is not much point in my listing the other capabilities when you can get those directly from Acunu. However, there is one other thing that is interesting about Acunu’s press release.

The press release includes a quote from Billy Bosworth, the CEO of DataStax. DataStax is the leading provider of Cassandra (indeed, it is the only major provider) and Acunu and DataStax used to be competitors. However, now that Cassandra’s performance has improved (thanks, in no small measure, to contributions from Acunu) Acunu has stopped distributing Cassandra and is focusing on its Analytics product. DataStax has no equivalent and, indeed, neither does anyone else – at least as far as I’m aware. Most vendors ignore Cassandra completely or, where they do support it, companies such as Tableau extract the data, which defeats the object if you want to do streaming analytics and perform functions like real-time trending.

So, Acunu Analytics bolsters the case for using Cassandra (and therefore DataStax) in environments where streaming analytics are important, so DataStax and Acunu working together is clearly a win-win proposition. The companies have not yet announced a formal partnership but it seems to me to be only a matter of time, especially as they already have a number of joint customers. Of course it is also possible that one or other company, more likely DataStax, will wave a fat enough cheque at the other to acquire it. Regardless of that, if you are looking at Cassandra you should probably be looking at Acunu Analytics as well as the database as a part of your evaluation process and, if you’re an existing user that doesn’t already use Acunu Analytics you should probably consider that possibility also.