This document provides an overview of Apache Cassandra, including its history, key features, architecture, and use cases. Cassandra is an open-source, decentralized, distributed database management system that provides high availability with no single point of failure. It scales linearly as nodes are added and easily handles large amounts of data across clusters. Popular companies that use Cassandra include Netflix, Spotify, and Hulu for its capabilities such as replication, high performance, and scalability.