Case Study Retail & CPG
Unblocking a Tier 1 Retailer's Big Data Engineering Upgrade and Cloud Cost
Upgrading a stalled Informatica Big Data Engineering platform to 10.4 and redesigning AWS architecture for a tier 1 retail customer
$100K+ in annual license savings, $2M+ projected annual revenue upside
Summary
A tier 1 retail customer engaged aiDataWorks to unblock a stalled migration from PowerCenter to Big Data Engineering and rein in AWS costs on a platform that hadn't yet gone live. aiDataWorks assessed the environment, delivered architecture guidance to business and IT stakeholders, and upgraded the customer to BDE 10.4 to unblock the workflow migration. The team also redesigned the AWS architecture — eliminating an underused streaming node and relocating the repository on-premise — to cut ongoing infrastructure spend while preserving room to scale, guiding the customer's own administrators through execution to build internal capability. The engagement produced over $100,000 in annual license savings, roughly $120,000 in AWS savings over two years, and a projected $2,000,000+ per year in potential analytics-driven revenue benefit.
The challenge
- A stalled platform migration. The strategic move of workflows from PowerCenter to Big Data Engineering had stalled because the BDE/BDM platform lacked features the customer needed at the time.
- High AWS costs before go-live. AWS infrastructure costs were already high even though the platform had not gone live, driven by redundant nodes and an AWS Oracle RDS repository.
- Analytics limited by legacy databases. Continued reliance on relational legacy databases was limiting the customer's analytics capability.
The solution
How we built it
Environment assessment & architecture guidance
- Conducted an environment assessment across the customer's non-production and production environments.
- Delivered architecture guidance to business stakeholders, IT management, and platform administrators.
BDE 10.4 platform upgrade
- Upgraded the platform to Big Data Engineering (formerly Big Data Management) 10.4, unblocking the stalled PowerCenter-to-BDE workflow migration.
AWS cost redesign & administrator enablement
- Redesigned the AWS architecture after stakeholder consultation: removed an underused Edge Data Streaming node and relocated the repository from AWS Oracle RDS to an on-premise database, using existing customer licenses, while preserving the ability to scale on-premise or in AWS later.
- Guided the customer's own administrators through executing the upgrade steps themselves, building internal skill and trust, followed by configuration, smoke testing, and go-live support.
Outcomes
- Unblocking the stalled PowerCenter-to-BDE migration let the customer resume a strategic modernization initiative that had been on hold.
- Redesigning the AWS architecture cut ongoing infrastructure spend well before the platform even went live, avoiding wasted cloud costs.
- Guiding the customer's own administrators through the upgrade steps themselves built internal platform capability and trust, rather than leaving the customer dependent on outside experts.
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