You're correct, there's a beefy learning curve to properly configure, fine-tune and scale each of these components. Our job is to tackle that learning curve so you don't have to.
As a developer, you get a little more value out of that deal every time you want to play with something new.
It works for us, because after a while you start seeing patterns in proper automation. There are only so many ways to store, modify and move bits around.
That's where a bit of skepticism stems from, as I've dealt with both of these databases first hand, also various other stacks ranging from java, python, ruby, even lua.
The not-so-stellar uptime record of Heroku shows that making one size fit all is quite hard, even when you're doing it only for a relatively small set of components.
Doing it well for nearly all of them is nothing short of the holy grail in systems management.
We'll start with the fundamentals, and gradually expand to the full catalog.
Currently, I don't really have the need or desire to manage my own Hadoop cluster, but I haven't been completely satisfied with Amazon's Elastic Map Reduce offering either.
Definitely interested in any beta tests and/or feedback for that!
Cassandra and Hadoop alone need a good chunk of domain knowledge to keep them running smoothly. Seeing them listed casually next to so many other deployment stacks makes me feel slightly dizzy.
I'm definitely looking forward to see if you'll be able to pull this off.