ScyllaDB and SADA partner to deliver greater value for database customers, validate marketplace integration

ScyllaDB provides a monstrously scalable and fast NoSQL database as a service (DBaaS). While the connection to the fierce namesake from mythology is obvious, what’s less apparent is how intensely ScyllaDB is determined to reorder the world of online database technology. 

“On one side, there are companies that are disruptors–cloud native, digital native–and they’re bringing a new capability to market,” says Enrique Alonso, Senior Director of Partner Alliances at ScyllaDB. “Then there are companies that are being disrupted in the market.”

The disruption that ScyllaDB brings to market is the capability to enable data-intensive applications that require gigabyte-to-petabyte scale workloads operating at millions of operations per second with single-digit millisecond latencies. “ScyllaDB is known as the low-latency, high-performance database in this space,” says Alonso. “We are very well known for maximizing the performance you can get out of the underlying platform.” 

ScyllaDB enables teams to harness the ever-increasing computing power of modern infrastructures–eliminating barriers to scale as data grows. Unlike other databases, ScyllaDB is built with deep architectural advancements that enable exceptional end-user experiences at radically lower costs. Over 400 game-changing companies use ScyllaDB for their toughest database challenges. 

Business challenge

As a fast-growing business, ScyllaDB has a lot of potential. Many of their prospective customers want to move off the DynamoDB NoSQL database on another cloud provider and onto their managed ScyllaDB NoSQL database as a service (DBaaS) that’s hosted on Google Cloud. A vocal group of these customers even ask for Google Cloud by name. “There were many customers who were adamant that the place they wanted to run was Google Cloud,” says Peter Corless, Director of Technical Advocacy at ScyllaDB. “They would accept no substitute.” 

Eyeing the estimated $50 billion of unspent commits that current Google Cloud customers have signed up for, ScyllaDB thinks there’s even more unmet demand for replacement of Cassandra open source databases that ScyllaDB could easily tap into through the Google Cloud Marketplace.

The challenge, however, was that ScyllaDB needed to be on the marketplace to access this large addressable market in the cloud. They found a potential solution for getting onto the marketplace but didn’t have the necessary experience to evaluate its suitability. Therefore, ScyllaDB decided to reach out to a knowledgeable expert for onboarding their DBaaS solution onto the Google Cloud Marketplace.

Additionally, ScyllaDB was a newer brand to the Google Cloud ecosystem and felt they needed help raising their profile to gain more commercial attention. 

Solution

To get onto the Google Cloud Marketplace, ScyllaDB decided they needed expert feedback for their chosen solution. After getting Google Cloud’s recommendation, ScyllaDB decided to engage SADA, a multiple-time Google Cloud Partner of the Year, which operates a leading Google Cloud Marketplace Integration practice. 

Before we launched on the Google Cloud Marketplace, we sought out SADA to advise us on pre-integration best practices. SADA validated our choice of integration technology, which paved the way for us to proceed. In addition, there are many go-to-market aspects of running on the marketplace, and we had many valuable conversations with SADA on that topic, too.

Enrique Alonso | Senior Director of Partner Alliances at ScyllaDB

On the marketing side, ScyllaDB joined SADA’s SaaS Alliance Program, a go-to-market acceleration program for ISVs and digital natives. Designed to enable SaaS companies to accelerate growth, the program helps partners fully harness and amplify their sales and marketing efforts within the Google Cloud ecosystem. 

“In general, the challenge for a new Google Cloud partner, such as ScyllaDB, is getting noticed,” says Alonso. “SADA has the size in the Google Cloud ecosystem to be an effective proxy for us. We get the benefit of the Google Cloud brand with the advocacy of SADA on our behalf, which allows us to fully leverage the Google Cloud channel.” 

Through the alliance, ScyllaDB gained access to SADA’s in-person and virtual events and video programming, which increased their commercial exposure within the Google Cloud ecosystem. These included the SADA IMPACT cloud summit, Google Cloud Ground School, and Cloud N Clear podcast. “SADA’s Google Cloud Ground School was our coming-out party, and that’s just vital for people running on Google Cloud who’ve never heard of ScyllaDB,” says Corless. “Or maybe they’ve heard of us but never had direct experience with our brand.”

Impact

As a result of consulting with SADA, ScyllaDB received the necessary information to make an informed decision about how to proceed with their Google Marketplace Integration. In addition, ScyllaDB has benefited from best practices SADA conveyed for operating in the marketplace. Because their marketplace transactions take the form of private offers, the procedures differ from regular transactions. “Our expectation for the marketplace isn’t that customers will fall from the sky doing what’s known as public offers,” says Alonso. “We know customers never fall from the sky; our business approach on the marketplace revolves around private offers.”

With their integration on the marketplace operational, ScyllaDB and existing customers can complete their private transactions online, with the amount of spend counting against the customers’ overall Google Cloud commit. “There are many reasons why customers want to buy from the marketplace, including because they’re fulfilling their own Google Cloud commit,” says Alonso. “Not only do they want to draw down that commit to buy Google Cloud services but also so they can buy ISV products. The customer takes advantage of that to buy ScyllaDB. We take advantage of that for deal velocity. It’s a win-win situation.”

Additionally, with their presence on the marketplace, ScyllaDB has not only made it easier for their customers to buy their advanced database solutions but also enabled them to more conveniently acquire all the parts of their cloud solution.

A database is not bought in isolation. People need multi-cloud deployments and microservices. It’s a huge advantage for us to work with SADA because the only thing we offer is a database. But people looking to deploy complex applications need a partner like SADA to help with all the components they’ll integrate into their system.

Peter Corless | Director of Technical Advocacy at ScyllaDB

Together, ScyllaDB, SADA, and Google Cloud offer an exponentially greater value-add to their joint customers than they do individually. “Our relationship isn’t just additive, it’s raised to a power when we work together,” says Corless. “That’s one of the reasons why SADA is our closest partner. When good people collaborate, you make a greater impact than working separately.”

By working with SADA to be able to sell on the Google Cloud Marketplace, ScyllaDB can now offer their higher performance and more cost-effective NoSQL DBaaS to a wider group of customers. Those customers can reduce their DBaaS cost to one-seventh of what it takes to run on DynamoDB, which can become a game-changing experience for their companies. “The fact that customers can take their DynamoDB workloads, move them to Google Cloud seamlessly, and see a 7X improvement in price-performance is a huge, huge thing,” says Corless.

As for business results, ScyllaDB has seen significant impact from their participation in SADA’s SaaS Alliance Program. Based on their involvement with SADA’s events and video webcasts, they’ve increased the visibility of their brand and begun co-selling with SADA. 

“We believe that the relationship between SADA and ScyllaDB has been game-changing for us in that it accelerates our business in the same way that our database allows our customers to accelerate their business,” says Corless. “Co-marketing has made us more visible within the Google Cloud community, and without that we would not have the same memorability or trust that SADA enables.”

With hundreds of databases available on the internet, ScyllaDB needed a way to stand out from the competition. Their association with SADA has helped them do that. “There are always more databases coming out and we are just one of those 400 options,” says Corless. “To break through that, we need to have somebody help amplify your voice, and SADA has been fantastic helping increase our mindshare of the broader Google Cloud community.”