Attending Big Data LDN
You never know what to expect when you exhibit for the first time at a trade show, particularly one that hasn’t happened since the pandemic kicked-off. Will people show-up? Are the attendees even our target buyers? Did the show deliver on the attendees expectations? Will there be strong Cassandra DB interest?
Big Data LDN is one of Europe’s leading data & analytics events. The theatre speaking slots were standing room only and the exhibitor sponsorship packages were sold out. The show was free and there were a lot of students on the job hunt which was a bonus for those exhibitors with roles to fill. I’ve never considered a show for recruitment and can imagine a number of roles were filled as a direct result of the event.
AxonOps exhibited at the bottom end of the sponsorship package. It was a toe-dip in the water to better understand if our target user is attending this type of event. The bottom line is we are targeting users who concern themselves with the management of open source data infrastructure – think DevOps Engineer, Site Reliability Engineer, Enterprise Architect. More specifically, we support Apache Cassandra today with Apache Kafka next year and wanted to find those users.
Cassandra DB interest at Big Data LDN
The show was primarily attended by data scientists/engineers, although we did manage to have encouraging conversations with a good number of our target users.
For us, having the opportunity to meet people and get direct feedback is invaluable. We found many Apache Cassandra DB users among the crowds and had some great conversations. There was strong Cassandra DB interest at Big Data LDN.
Here’s a summary below from those conversations.
Conversation takeaways around Cassandra DB
- Cassandra DB still has strong adoption and interest amongst people supporting online applications requiring high performance and zero down-time. We had a number of conversations with people who are considering Cassandra and wanted to learn more.
- We engaged a number of MongoDB and PostgreSQL users who admitted they are hitting scale and performance issues. Cassandra’s ability to scale easily with zero drop in performance was clearly of interest.
- Operationalizing open source data platforms for Cassandra in AWS is a priority and having flexibility to select Cassandra GCP Azure, Cassandra Azure or any other cloud provider is key. Everyone we spoke to with an understanding of the tooling available agreed management tools for self-hosting is poorly served.
- There is doubt of DbaaS or managed services being the only answer to the operational challenges of open source data platforms. Lack of control and visibility into the provisioned capacity and performance requirements were mentioned several times as concerns.
- ‘What’s happening now?’ is gaining momentum. There is a need for data infrastructure such as Cassandra and Kafka tuned for real-time applications and not one solely serving the use case of ‘what happened last week, last month?’
We will be back to Big Data LDN next year
With momentum building for data infrastructure supporting real-time applications we believe the show will have even greater relevance for AxonOps. With our support extending from the Cassandra DB to Kafka, AxonOps will also have an open source management tool platform with broader relevance for the audience.
Trade shows are great, they provide a fantastic opportunity to have a large quantity of conversations in a very short time. The conversations we had were valuable and informative, we walked away solidifying the direction we are heading in while generating great pointers for certain adjustments moving forward.
Oh, we might also have picked up a few new customers 😉
If you are a Cassandra DB user you can get started with AxonOps at no cost here.
Get in touch with us for a demo. We’d love to hear from you!
About AxonOps
We offer a one-stop management solution for open source Apache Cassandra that combines all the features required to operate your clusters efficiently, reliably, and securely.
