Case Studies Debunking the Free Open Source Myth: How Signal Replaced Open Source Cassandra with Aerospike® for Superior TCO and Operations

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	Debunking the Free Open Source Myth: How Signal Replaced Open Source Cassandra with Aerospike® for Superior TCO and Operations

Debunking the Free Open Source Myth: How Signal Replaced Open Source Cassandra with Aerospike® for Superior TCO and Operations

Technology Category	Analytics & Modeling - Predictive Analytics Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Storage Services Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Data Management Platforms
Applicable Industries	Professional Service Software
Applicable Functions	Business Operation Product Research & Development
Use Cases	Real-Time Location System (RTLS) Remote Asset Management
Services	Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services Software Design & Engineering Services System Integration
Challenge	Signal, an identity resolution platform, faced significant challenges with their existing data store, Cassandra. The platform was becoming increasingly expensive, unreliable, and nonperforming, leading to large and unpredictable latency responses and uptime issues. These problems were affecting every element of their business processes, resulting in more frequent and severe incidents. The Cassandra clusters were difficult to maintain and required high-touch operations, diverting resources from higher-value projects. Signal's Customer Identity Platform (CIP) had grown to over 550 servers, leading to server sprawl and unpredictable performance, negatively impacting the company's SLAs. The projected 25% data growth further complicated the situation, prompting the search for a new solution. Read More
About Customer	Signal is a leading SaaS provider of data onboarding and real-time identity resolution. Their technology platform empowers people-based marketers to enhance customer experiences by providing relevance across all channels, regardless of place or time. Signal's Customer Identity Platform (CIP) is designed to continuously identify and update customer activity both online and offline, maintain customer profiles with full brand interactions and history, and activate marketing through connections to various platforms. The company faced significant challenges with their existing data store, Cassandra, which was becoming increasingly expensive, unreliable, and nonperforming, affecting their business processes and SLAs. Read More
Solution	Signal decided to replace their existing Cassandra data store with Aerospike. Aerospike offered a low total cost of ownership, high performance at scale, and ease of scaling. During the presales process, Aerospike's engineering team demonstrated a deep understanding of Signal's problems, giving them confidence in the solution. Aerospike's Hybrid-Memory Architecture™ (HMA) allowed for high performance with only indexes in memory while persisting data on SSD, requiring a much lower server footprint than Cassandra. This resulted in significant cost savings and improved performance. Aerospike's Cross-Datacenter Replication (XDR) feature enabled real-time cross-datacenter replication across regions, further enhancing performance and reliability. Signal saw immediate improvements, including a 68% reduction in TCO, 100x performance improvement, and increased data reliability. The switch to Aerospike allowed Signal to focus on strategic initiatives and accelerate key business processes. Read More Log in to view content
Contents

Technology Category

Analytics & Modeling - Predictive Analytics

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Storage Services

Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Data Management Platforms

Applicable Industries

Professional Service

Software

Applicable Functions

Business Operation

Product Research & Development

Use Cases

Real-Time Location System (RTLS)

Remote Asset Management

Services

Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services

Software Design & Engineering Services

System Integration

Challenge

Signal, an identity resolution platform, faced significant challenges with their existing data store, Cassandra. The platform was becoming increasingly expensive, unreliable, and nonperforming, leading to large and unpredictable latency responses and uptime issues. These problems were affecting every element of their business processes, resulting in more frequent and severe incidents. The Cassandra clusters were difficult to maintain and required high-touch operations, diverting resources from higher-value projects. Signal's Customer Identity Platform (CIP) had grown to over 550 servers, leading to server sprawl and unpredictable performance, negatively impacting the company's SLAs. The projected 25% data growth further complicated the situation, prompting the search for a new solution.

About Customer

Signal is a leading SaaS provider of data onboarding and real-time identity resolution. Their technology platform empowers people-based marketers to enhance customer experiences by providing relevance across all channels, regardless of place or time. Signal's Customer Identity Platform (CIP) is designed to continuously identify and update customer activity both online and offline, maintain customer profiles with full brand interactions and history, and activate marketing through connections to various platforms. The company faced significant challenges with their existing data store, Cassandra, which was becoming increasingly expensive, unreliable, and nonperforming, affecting their business processes and SLAs.

Solution

Signal decided to replace their existing Cassandra data store with Aerospike. Aerospike offered a low total cost of ownership, high performance at scale, and ease of scaling. During the presales process, Aerospike's engineering team demonstrated a deep understanding of Signal's problems, giving them confidence in the solution. Aerospike's Hybrid-Memory Architecture™ (HMA) allowed for high performance with only indexes in memory while persisting data on SSD, requiring a much lower server footprint than Cassandra. This resulted in significant cost savings and improved performance. Aerospike's Cross-Datacenter Replication (XDR) feature enabled real-time cross-datacenter replication across regions, further enhancing performance and reliability. Signal saw immediate improvements, including a 68% reduction in TCO, 100x performance improvement, and increased data reliability. The switch to Aerospike allowed Signal to focus on strategic initiatives and accelerate key business processes.

Impact #1	Signal saw immediate improvements in performance and reliability after switching to Aerospike. The p50 performance estimate was at 10 microseconds, almost a thousand times faster than before.
Impact #2	The reduction in server count from 450 to 60 significantly decreased the time spent on server maintenance, freeing up engineering cycles for strategic initiatives.
Impact #3	Signal's large-scale business processes became much faster, with some processes improving by 10x and others by 60x.

Impact #1

Signal saw immediate improvements in performance and reliability after switching to Aerospike. The p50 performance estimate was at 10 microseconds, almost a thousand times faster than before.

Impact #2

The reduction in server count from 450 to 60 significantly decreased the time spent on server maintenance, freeing up engineering cycles for strategic initiatives.

Impact #3

Signal's large-scale business processes became much faster, with some processes improving by 10x and others by 60x.

Benefit #1	68% reduction in total cost of ownership (TCO) over three years.
Benefit #2	Reduction in server count from 450 with Cassandra to just 60 with Aerospike.
Benefit #3	100x performance improvement, with p99s plunging from 3,900 milliseconds to 23 milliseconds.

Benefit #1

68% reduction in total cost of ownership (TCO) over three years.

Benefit #2

Reduction in server count from 450 with Cassandra to just 60 with Aerospike.

Benefit #3

100x performance improvement, with p99s plunging from 3,900 milliseconds to 23 milliseconds.

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Overview

Debunking the Free Open Source Myth: How Signal Replaced Open Source Cassandra with Aerospike® for Superior TCO and Operations

Operational Impact

Quantitative Benefit