Case Study

Medical Device Maker Streamlines its Snowflake Data Ecosystem with phData’s Elastic Platform Operations

The Customer’s Challenge

A Fortune 500 medical device maker sought to scale while implementing an enterprise-level robust data platform with industry-leading architecture and engineering principles. To build a well-architected data platform quickly and efficiently, they needed to partner with a team with deep expertise in implementing and operationalizing data platforms.

phData’s Solution

Tram from phData’s automation solutions Toolkit was used to migrate the company’s complex data ecosystem built on Oracle Exadata and SAP HANA to the Snowflake Data Cloud, a much more cost-effective solution. phData’s Elastic Platform Operations & Elastic Platform Monitoring enabled the company to gain access to 24×7 monitoring and management of warehouse alerts; both machine-automated and human-managed.

As a result, the company was able to create and manage project resources within Snowflake, painlessly onboard and manage users, and save thousands of dollars in unnecessary credit consumption.

The Full Story

An innovative and groundbreaking medical device manufacturer was looking to continue leading the healthcare industry with its purpose-driven innovation. 

It is this innovation-centric approach that led the company to explore advanced data ecosystem solutions. In the past, due to aggressive timelines, the company had often overlooked data management best practices. But over time they determined that their existing data platform was a bottleneck and holding them back from scaling their ability to innovate and create.

Why phData?

As a returning client, the company was well aware of the ingenuity and dedication phData pours into making its partners successful. It was phData’s in-depth knowledge of Snowflake, staff of passionate experts, and proven track record of navigating corporate IT standards, procedures, and processes that led the company to choose phData, yet again. 

Expertise with other technologies in this customer’s modern data stack, including AWS, Dataiku, DevOps, and MLOps was an added plus and one that made phData the clear choice. phData provided technologies and services that helped the client effectively identify and mend the gaps in its existing data ecosystem. 

What Made phData Stand Out

  • phData’s Elastic Operations Team – This is a flexible staffing model service that is typically not available for fixed projects or professional-services style engagements. The elastic operations team was able to effectively tackle the dependencies, delays, and unforeseen blockers from coordinating teams present due to the siloed corporate structure of the company. As a result, phData was able to find innovative ways to keep the project on track.
  • Tram & Elastic Platform Monitoring – Proven automation solutions from phData’s Toolkit were used to monitor and manage this operation. Tram automated the creation and management of project resources within Snowflake; as well as, painlessly onboarded users and managed their privileges. Elastic Platform Monitoring was used to monitor applications along with Power BI dashboards for visualizations

Solution Implementation 

  • Information Architecture Development – The first step in the process was to define the information architecture. Thereon, phData provided the tools and resources needed to ensure that new projects and initiatives stuck to the architecture. Provisioning tools were integrated with the company’s ticketing system; enabling users to easily submit requests for new workspaces. However, if the prescribed information architecture didn’t seem to fit the needs of a project, phData’s team consulted with the implementers to identify gaps and propose workable solutions. This approach saved the company’s architects time and effort – essentially, phData’s team served as an extension of the client’s architecture team.
  • Credit Monitoring – Automated and Manual – The phData team also acted as “credit cops”, monitoring Snowflake warehouses for excess credit burn. phData’s automation ensured that warehouses were set up with auto-suspend processes and resource monitors with reasonable credit limits. Then phData’s 24×7 Elastic Operations team handled alerts on the warehouses and was able to apply people-based logic and reasoning, making judgment calls that purely automated processes can’t effectively make.

For instance, the phData team’s basic understanding of different use cases being solved with Snowflake helped them ensure that business-critical warehouses didn’t suspend before the application teams had a chance to take a look at what was going on.  

People-based monitoring of the alerts also caught a situation where one of the workspace admins bumped up a warehouse to a 4x-large with max_clusters = 8 for a burst of work but forgot to size it back down. With some investigation, phData’s team isolated the situation drivers and was able to make changes immediately, saving the company thousands of dollars in unnecessary credit consumption.

Results

By the end of the engagement, the medical device manufacturer had effectively streamlined its data ecosystem, and with the help of phData’s industry-leading Toolkit, had added over 7000 users, 100+ workspaces, 300+ databases, almost 2,000 schemas, and nearly 10,000 roles to its data platform in a time and cost-effective manner.

The company was also able to save thousands of dollars due to the 24×7 credit monitoring provided by phData’s Elastic Platform Operations service.

phData was able to help the company achieve its goal of controlling and scaling its operations.

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