Case Study: CCAD achieves scalable, deadlock-free systems and faster developer productivity with Akka

Typesafe aids CCAD in managing cable operations

CCAD develops conditional access and control-system software (notably the CASMR product suite) used by cable operators worldwide. As their subscriber base and entitlement complexity grew, their Java-based stack produced lots of boilerplate and an internal asynchronous state machine prone to dead- and live-locks, which hurt developer productivity and risked timing and accuracy in subscriber entitlements.

CCAD adopted the Typesafe Reactive Platform—moving modules to Scala (Actors), then Akka and Spray, running on OSGi microservices, and applying TDD with ScalaTest and libraries like shapeless and Scalaz, backed by direct Typesafe support. The change eliminated most deadlocks, boosted developer velocity and confidence, improved performance and code quality, and reduced regression/qualification testing effort, with engineering now primarily in Scala.

CCAD

Michael Smith

Senior Software Engineer