The Apache Cassandra community has released the beta version of Cassandra 4.0, which includes over 1000 bug fixes and improvements. This release aims to build a robust foundation for handling demanding data challenges. Cassandra is well-suited for cloud-native applications due to its peer-to-peer architecture, elasticity, and resilience. The community has been working on making the data tier as reliable as stateless components in these applications. New APIs are being developed to provide more power, flexibility, and speed to modern cloud native application developers. Cassandra 4.0 is the beginning of a cloud-native future for the platform, with a focus on improving data extraction capabilities and making it easier to integrate with other systems for search, analytics, and machine learning purposes.