8x Faster Reporting with a DWH Solution in Azure Cloud
The customer was facing big challenges while collecting, curating, and cleaning up data to get it ready for reporting.
faster regulatory reporting
source of truth for all data
cleaned and governed data
Business Case Story
Our client was managing almost a hundred disparate systems, leaving it with a broken view of its enterprise performance. Without a single source of trusted data, it was necessary for the business departments to implement workarounds, when the time came for regulatory reporting. Furthermore, data analytics and interactive visualizations were required to enhance decision-making.
The data stewards were spending significant amount of time collecting, curating and cleaning up data to get it ready for reporting. Moreover, it was taking huge resources to get meaningful business insights the right way. The senior management realized it should not need to deploy that level of resources to get this job done.
Our client was resolute in its need to modernize applications and centralize its data infrastructure to create a single source for all information. Therefore, the company engaged Zelusit to help build a Modern Data Warehouse in Azure Cloud.
Solution Story: A Modern Enterprise Data Platform in Azure Cloud
Zelusit collaborated closely with our client and Microsoft to propose a data warehouse solution that would both meet customer’s requirements and future-proof its IT Infrastructure. Our team proposed cloud, hybrid-cloud and on-premise solutions, guiding the client through the advantages and disadvantages of each scenario. Our data warehouse consultants performed a thorough cost analysis associated with setting up and supporting each solution downstream.
After deciding on a pure cloud data warehouse solution and running a successful six-week pilot implementation, Zelusit developed a scalable end-to-end Azure Data Platform. It integrated large amounts of both structured and unstructured data from multiple sources a unified data warehouse which was going to be a single source of truth.
Illustration: Cloud Data Warehouse Architecture
The Modern Data Warehouse followed suit of Zelusit’s modularized Azure reference architecture. It provided us with flexibility to tailor the data platform to the specific business needs of our client. The cloud data warehouse supports data high volume of data ingestion while optimizing cost and processing of information.
Leveraging Azure Data Factory, we landed all source data into an Azure Data Lake Store before ingesting it via PolyBase into the Data Warehouse. Azure SQL Data Warehouse was chosen to power the Management Data Warehouse (MDW) to offer 1PB of storage per database, massive parallel processing (MPP), and cost-effective storing by the agility to import and export with PolyBase from Azure Data Lake Store.
Zelusit leveraged Azure Databricks to handle the heavy workloads required for enhanced enterprise reporting and ensure high performance and analysis. The cloud data warehouse further supports machine learning and AI processing using Spark ML, Spark R, and Sparkly R and integrates seamlessly into other Azure services to provision a holistic data strategy and 360-degree customer view.
Azure Analysis Services provides a semantic model for the data and increases DWH performance when analyzing large amounts of data. Azure Active Directory authenticates users who connect to the Analysis Services server through Power BI. Data Factory can also use Azure AD to authenticate to SQL Data Warehouse via a service principal or Managed identity for Azure resources.
Our team implemented Microsoft Power BI to enable omni-device self-reporting as well as mature access of control and security providing interactive user experience. Zelusit delivered training to fast-track the learning curve allowing for members of Lines of Business to enhance data-driven decision making.
Benefits
Zelusit’s cloud data warehouse solution provided a thorough comprehension of our client’s amortized daily financial position across various lines of business. The reporting time was optimized by 95 percent – from two business days to two hours.
The modern data platform offered enhanced visibility into enterprise-wide performance, such as revenue, cost of goods sold and energy volumes, allowing management to drill down into customer’s separate business units performance through self-service Power BI reports.
Our solution provides scalability and high availability while being cost-effective and secure. The Azure Cloud Modern Data Warehouse now turns customer’s data into actionable insights at any device.
The implementation of this cloud data platform acts as a critical step towards organizational evolution data-driven strategic management. Our client now has the agility to leverage its data to incredible competitive advantage and influence innovations such as proactive marketing with predictive analytics and optimized manufacturing with real-time analytics to continuing to cement its position as a market leader.
