July 2018 Summaries

The Payment Service Directive (PSD2) aims to make cross-border payments more efficient by enabling third-party payment service providers like Facebook, Google, and Apple Pay. However, many banks are struggling with data security compliance under PSD2. With the shift towards open banking and APIs, banks now face competition from companies offering financial services linked to bank accounts. This change necessitates a reorganization of data management and approach to accommodate new data flows while maintaining user authentication integrity. Financial institutions must develop new infrastructure and adopt technologies that transfer data securely at low costs. Having control over data location is crucial, especially in hybrid cloud architectures. Graph databases can provide a 360-degree view of customer data for pattern analysis and real-time interactions. To accommodate APIs effectively, banks need to understand the new security requirements, budget for infrastructure development, and create new data management processes involving analytics.

This blog post provides an overview of resources for learning about Apache Cassandra, a distributed database management system. Key sources include the official Apache website, DataStax Documentation, DBA StackExchange & Stack Overflow, books such as "Cassandra: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition", DataStax Academy courses, blogs like Planet Cassandra, and community channels on platforms like Slack. These resources offer comprehensive information about various aspects of Cassandra, including its architecture, operations, data modeling, latest news, and opportunities for engagement with the community.

Dolphin and Jonathan Ellis were impressed by Apache Cassandra's peer-to-peer architecture and resiliency, leading them to start a company supporting it. They faced challenges in the early days due to the rapid emergence of new NoSQL projects, but they focused on ensuring community users were happy. The Cassandra Summits played an important role in attracting bigger companies with larger use cases. Initially, the biggest challenge was convincing companies to adopt a pre-V1.0 software, but as more big names used it, the focus shifted to implementation challenges. Dolphin's advice for someone working on early stage technology is to get users and make them successful in production, encouraging them to talk about their experience with the world.

DataStax has partnered with Pivotal to provide real-time data platforms at cloud-scale for customers building customer 360 real-time applications and large-scale microservices on the Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF) application platform. They have developed Kubernetes yaml files which deploy DataStax Enterprise inside a Kubernetes cluster managed by PKS, and are working on their next generation broker integration via Pivotal's new service broker called Kibosh. This post provides background on why DataStax created a tool to help manage containerized DSE environments on PKS and a guide to setting it up in your PKS environment. The partnership aims to provide an installable tile on the PCF marketplace, allowing customers to deploy DSE in a PKS environment in a robust and consistent manner. This enables developers to consume DSE as their real-time data platform within Pivotal Cloud Foundry's paradigm.

The Banking, Financial services and Insurance (BFSI) sector faces challenges in managing large volumes of data due to strict regulations and the constant threat of cyberattacks. Many BFSI organizations still operate on legacy systems that struggle with handling data efficiently. To overcome these issues, companies are adopting distributed cloud databases designed for hybrid clouds, enabling more efficient and scalable infrastructures. This helps financial services firms meet compliance requirements, improve customer segmentation, develop targeted marketing campaigns, and enhance security measures against fraudulent activities. Implementing systems driven by a distributed cloud database gives BFSI organizations a competitive advantage in handling complex volumes of data at scale.

Hybrid cloud infrastructure can effectively address challenges faced by builders of ecommerce applications in today's fast-paced environment. It offers scalability, efficiency, security, agility, and cost savings for managing large volumes of data in real time while ensuring high levels of responsiveness and personalization. Remote data storage reduces the risk of data breaches, and centralizing data allows for efficient global updates without disrupting ecommerce transactions or sensitive payment information transmissions. Hybrid cloud solutions also enable businesses to scale up easily during growth periods without facing technical issues, glitches, or maintenance downtime. Overall, hybrid cloud infrastructure is well-suited for ecommerce databases and provides numerous benefits to both enterprises and the teams involved in building and managing internal systems.

Apache Cassandra faced a long battle for acceptance as it emerged in the database world in 2008. The Kübler-Ross model of grieving can be seen to describe how people dealt with this change, from denial and anger to bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance. As companies moved towards high-scaling technologies like Cassandra, it became clear that relational databases were not enough for the new era of big data. Despite initial resistance, Cassandra eventually gained mainstream adoption as its benefits became apparent and more businesses started using it. This pattern is similar to how other paradigm-shifting technologies have been embraced over time.