Challenge

BlackBerry wanted to develop a core IoT platform that was reliable, secure and scalable to address multiple industry specific applications and solutions. From the start the BlackBerry engineering team set out to build a cutting edge IoT platform that maintained three core design principles:

• Security. With an already rock solid reputation for security, BlackBerry needed to uphold these expectations for their customers IoT devices connected to the Internet can be hacked. Furthermore, the data sent from the devices needed to be kept private for confidentiality. BlackBerry had to build a solution where data could be transmitted securely and held privately
• Scalability. The platform had to be scalable to accommodate the information flow from a growing deployment of the tracking devices and sensors. The data had to be stored and be readily available for searches and analytics.
• Reliability. Finally, the customer data had to be stored with over 6 nines of reliability for long periods of time. This data would also need to be ported to customers as needed. What was equally important was the availability of data with low latency.

Solution

Apache Cassandra managed and supported by Instaclustr delivered the scale, performance and security required by BlackBerry to deliver the core requirements and capabilities of the BlackBerry IoT platform. Handling the platform’s data intake and application scaling requirements has proven to be instrumental to BlackBerry innovating and strengthening their product to deliver a far more effective IoT platform for their customers.

The Instaclustr managed solution for Apache Cassandra has provided the stable operational environment required for the BlackBerry engineering team to be able to focus primarily on developing additional capabilities and features to integrate effectively into the IoT Platform. BlackBerry has relied on the expertise and continued support of the Instaclustr support team to ensure that the database and associated technologies operate effectively and as efficiently as possible.