Amazon ElastiCache vs Hazelcast Platform

Amazon ElastiCache is a managed caching service compatible with Valkey, Memcached, and Redis OSS, with performance described as microsecond latency. Customers can deploy a serverless cache or a node-based cluster. ElastiCache Serverless monitors compute, memory, and network use and scales vertically and horizontally as demand changes. It replicates data across multiple Availability Zones and offers a 99.99% availability SLA for each cache. Listed uses include application and semantic caching, data and session stores, and leaderboards. It can act as a front-end cache for Amazon RDS, Aurora, DocumentDB, and DynamoDB, and improve performance with EC2 and EMR. Security options include encryption in transit and at rest, IAM authentication, Valkey or Redis OSS AUTH, and role-based access control. CloudWatch provides more than 40 operational metrics at no additional charge. Valkey serverless pricing starts at $6 a month, billed according to stored data in GB-hours and requests measured in ECPUs. Data tiering is unavailable with ElastiCache Serverless.

Hazelcast Platform brings a distributed compute engine and an in-memory data store together for real-time and AI-driven applications. It can process streaming data before storage, supporting action on data in motion, and provides fast reads and writes for interactive request/response workloads. SQL processing, stateful processing, event-time windows, and Java and SQL are listed capabilities. WAN Replication synchronizes clusters and supports automatic failover to a secondary cluster for disaster recovery. Security features include JAAS role-based access controls and TLS encryption for data moving between nodes and applications. The platform runs on public and private clouds, is available through AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure marketplaces, and supports hybrid deployment. Its Kafka Connector processes Apache Kafka topic streams and sends processed data back to Kafka. Hazelcast identifies mission-critical, data-intensive AI workloads as a focus, including use in financial services, retail, supply chain, and healthcare. The platform is available for Linux, macOS, and Windows, as well as through an API and self-hosted deployment. A free plan and free 30-day Enterprise trial are listed; the trial requires a requested license key. The annual self-managed subscription includes professional support, with pricing available by request.