EuroTech saved costs migrating to Apache Cassandra

Migrating to Apache Cassandra reclaimed DevOps focus to drive product growth.

Pythian helped EuroTech migrate from DataStax Enterprise to open-source Apache Cassandra to eliminate commercial licensing fees.

EuroTech, a global leader in high-performance IoT solutions hit a wall when its mission-critical DataStax Enterprise database environment suffered from mounting performance bottlenecks and escalating licensing costs. Pythian performed a comprehensive Database Health Check to diagnose the cluster issues and cleanly migrated the workload to open-source Apache Cassandra. This transition completely eliminated proprietary licensing fees and shifted routine maintenance to dedicated database specialists, allowing EuroTech's DevOps teams to focus on developing cutting-edge IoT solutions.

Pythian helped us better understand what our migration options were. Their database experts worked with our team to plan and seamlessly deploy the migration. They knew our business goal was to save costs, and helped us do exactly that!"

Federico Baldo

Chief Information Officer, EuroTech

Pythian’s deep expertise in Cassandra and their willingness to adapt to our business fluctuations made them more than a vendor; they became a strategic partner in our operational stability."

Federico Baldo

Chief Information Officer, EuroTech

PROPRIETARY OVERHEAD FINANCIAL DRAIN

Escalating commercial database subscription costs

EuroTech faced substantial recurring annual software fees for enterprise database features that strained their operating budget amid shifting market conditions.

VALUABLE RESOURCE MISALLOCATION

DevOps engineers restricted by infrastructure triage

Senior DevOps teams spent excessive engineering hours manually troubleshooting database performance gaps instead of focusing on core application innovation.

STRICT CONTRACTUAL RIGIDITY

Inability to dynamically right-size cluster footprints

Traditional annual software agreements for DSE locked the organization into rigid infrastructure commitments that prevented them from scaling down nodes to match changing operational scales.

SYSTEM METRIC DISRUPTION

Loss of enterprise observability and alerting frameworks

Terminating the commercial DSE subscriptions meant EuroTech would lose access to its native DataStax monitoring dashboards, requiring an entirely new framework to maintain operational visibility.

Eliminated proprietary subscription fees while preserving full data integrity across four environment clusters.

Following an initial Database Health Check to diagnose cluster bottlenecks, Pythian executed a seamless technical migration from DSE 5.x to open-source Apache Cassandra 3.0.x. The team safely transferred four distinct environment clusters—Test, Stress, Sandbox, and Production—without data loss, dropping commercial licensing fees while keeping critical performance features intact.

Eliminated manual triage and reduced engineering overhead through open-source automation.

To replace lost enterprise automation, Pythian configured independent open-source orchestration tools. Engineers deployed Cassandra Reaper to automate background cluster repairs and implemented Cassandra Medusa to manage secure, reliable backup routines.

Secured complete system visibility and eliminated vendor lock-in with custom telemetry.

Pythian removed the customer’s reliance on vendor-locked management platforms. To ensure proactive cluster monitoring and complete operational visibility, Pythian engineers designed a custom Cassandra telemetry layer powered by open-source Prometheus and Grafana dashboards.

24/7 remote DBA oversight and continuous system optimizations to maximize internal engineering capacity.

By transitioning EuroTech into a long-term managed services engagement, Pythian provided round-the-clock infrastructure stability as data volumes grew. Offloading day-to-day administration to Pythian’s global pool of Cassandra experts maintained 100% uptime and freed internal teams to focus entirely on product innovation.

Database Managed Services

Customer success story

EuroTech cut costs migrating to Cassandra

Migrating to Apache Cassandra reclaimed DevOps focus to drive product growth.

Pythian helped EuroTech migrate from DataStax Enterprise to open-source Apache Cassandra to eliminate commercial licensing fees.

Federico Baldo

100%

Database uptime during migration

112

Optimized production nodes

4

Environment clusters migrated

Eliminate proprietary database licensing fees; Migrate to open source.

EuroTech encountered scaling friction when legacy system overhead ran counter to corporate capital efficiency goals.

Federico Baldo

Escalating commercial database subscription costs

DevOps engineers restricted by infrastructure triage

Inability to dynamically right-size cluster footprints

Loss of enterprise observability and alerting frameworks

Eliminated proprietary subscription fees while preserving full data integrity across four environment clusters.

Eliminated manual triage and reduced engineering overhead through open-source automation.

Secured complete system visibility and eliminated vendor lock-in with custom telemetry.

24/7 remote DBA oversight and continuous system optimizations to maximize internal engineering capacity.

Secure continuous uptime and minimize database operational costs.