Combining Atlan, Snowflake, and Sigma to Democratize Entry to Properly-governed Information
At a Look
- North, a number one funds resolution supplier processing over $100 billion in annual transactions, aimed to enhance information discovery and governance atop their Snowflake- and Sigma-powered trendy information stack
- Adopting Atlan as their lively metadata platform, North has since achieved end-to-end visibility of 225,000 information property, securing delicate information, and rising adoption of self-service analytics
- In lower than a yr, their group is projecting $1.4mm in annual effectivity beneficial properties and a 200% development in Sigma adoption whereas realizing a 700% enhance in tagged Snowflake property which has contributed to mitigating thousands and thousands of {dollars} in threat
For over 30 years, North has established itself as a number one funds resolution supplier, now processing over $100 billion in transactions yearly. With a various portfolio of over 20 manufacturers and subsidiaries, they help a broad vary of cost wants, supporting brick-and-mortar and on-line shops by means of cost gateways, cellular options, and extra. Dedicated to serving industries that span eating places to authorities entities, North goals to be the simplest end-to-end funds supplier to do enterprise with.
With an unlimited information property comprising 225,000 property, totaling 41 terabytes on Snowflake, the duty of managing and governing North’s information belongs to Daniel Dowdy, Vice President of Information Analytics & Governance, serving for 13 years on the firm. Becoming a member of Atlan at Snowflake Summit 2024, Daniel shared his group’s journey, constructing and governing a contemporary information stack that helps each inside information customers and their flagship merchandise.
What do 20 subsidiaries and types, and 100,000+ retailers, imply for our group? It means we have now a number of information. We use that information to help a few of our hottest merchandise.”
Daniel Dowdy, Vice President, Information Analytics & Governance
North’s flagship choices, Payanywhere and Funds Hub, equip retailers with something from {hardware} and software program, to safe on-line portals, simplifying the complexities of funds for retailers.
Funds Hub, a complete funds and operations platform, serves as a command middle for the whole lot from transaction monitoring and reporting to stock administration and fraud safety. To ship crucial, transaction-level reporting to their clients, North depends on Snowflake.
“We make the most of Snowflake for each of those on the backend to supply close to real-time reporting and transaction-level reporting to our clients,” Daniel shared. “With out Snowflake, this simply wouldn’t be doable.”
Earlier than Snowflake, Information Silos
Earlier than Snowflake, North struggled with unchecked and unclear information. Easy duties like pulling uncooked information or producing studies may take days and even weeks, hindered by ETL bottlenecks and information silos scattered throughout a number of servers and databases, or Excel recordsdata circulated throughout the group.
As soon as a file goes out, that information is already stale. To not point out that when that file leaves you, customers can then modify it and make their very own supply of reality. So, you’re scuffling with a number of sources of the reality.”
Daniel Dowdy, Vice President, Information Analytics & Governance
The dearth of a single supply of reality sophisticated efforts to drive belief in North’s information, and with out clear lineage and governance, controlling that information as soon as it left their palms proved tough.
After Snowflake + Sigma, Correct, Actual-time Information
In 2019, North adopted Snowflake as their enterprise information lake, considerably enhancing their information science, analytics, and reporting capabilities. By shifting from outdated batch processing to real-time CDC options, their group traded cumbersome ETL workflows and embraced the effectivity of contemporary ELT processes.
“We went from a ‘Information Desert,’ the place retrieving info took days, to an oasis the place information was obtainable in actual time, and we may question it in seconds,” stated Daniel.
Whereas Snowflake represented a big leap ahead within the availability and reliability of information, Daniel’s group have been nonetheless chargeable for fielding easy requests for information entry. To scale back this workload, and to make information much more accessible to a rising variety of customers, their group launched Sigma, a enterprise intelligence software that empowers customers to independently entry, analyze, and visualize information, providing essential info in a self-service method.
With its acquainted, Excel-like interface, enterprise customers rapidly embraced Sigma, leading to a skyrocketing adoption charge, with annual person development now exceeding 200%.
Starting with 10 customers in 2019, we now have over 350 customers in Sigma, with an annual development charge of greater than 200% year-over-year. Now, Sigma is our self-service analytics platform, and it’s taken a number of burden off our information group.”
Daniel Dowdy, Vice President, Information Analytics & Governance
North has since engineered a contemporary information stack, organising sturdy pipelines that seamlessly ingest and replicate information from various sources like Oracle, MySQL, Salesforce, and S3. This wealth of information is then channeled into highly effective instruments reminiscent of Qlik, Snowpipe, and Kafka, all converging inside Snowflake.
As the amount and number of information grew, so did the demand for entry, shifting the problem from mere information accessibility to the extra advanced points of information governance and discovery.
“What grew to become the issue was how you can discover the information, and how you can govern it nicely,” Daniel shared. “Atlan grew to become the central level addressing all of those issues.”
Unlocking Snowflake and Sigma with Atlan
Connecting to over 225,000 information property inside Snowflake and Sigma took simply hours with Atlan, driving unprecedented visibility on a big scale.
“After partnering with Atlan, it took most likely a few hours earlier than we have been built-in with Snowflake and Sigma, connecting to over 225,000 property. We’re so proud of the outcomes,” Daniel shared.
This near-instant connection remodeled information discovery at North, as soon as a chaotic expertise of leaping by means of a number of silos, immediately making it easy to navigate and perceive their information property.
Atlan began getting us this speedy worth by means of information discovery. The way in which I preserve interested by it was the early days of the web. You had entry to this huge quantity of data, but it surely was actually onerous to seek out. Then, search engines like google made it straightforward to run a search and discover related content material. For us, Atlan grew to become Google for Information.”
Daniel Dowdy, Vice President, Information Analytics & Governance
Transferring past easy information discovery, Daniel’s group launched information glossaries, definitions, and complete phrases, enabling deeper dives into information, and using lineage to know upstream and downstream dependencies with ease.
With this precious context unlocked, their subsequent step was to ship it on to enterprise customers, who primarily devour information throughout the Sigma, with out switching to different instruments.
“That’s the place Atlan’s Chrome Extension grew to become a game-changer,” Daniel shared.
Atlan’s Chrome Extension remodeled information consumption inside Sigma. With context about their information property—dashboard descriptions, information definitions, tags, lineage, notifications, and upstream high quality alerts—now obtainable immediately in Sigma, customers now not needed to soar between instruments to perform their duties.
Out there in a sidebar, Atlan’s Chrome Extension made this info immediately accessible, with out coaching or change administration.
“The initiative required no coaching,” Daniel defined. “As a result of it’s a sidebar and intuitively exhibits this info, we might simply add it, then customers have been mechanically up and operating, enhancing their effectivity, and instantly seeing the profit.”
Situation Decision for Engineers and Customers, Alike
With context about their information property made obtainable in Sigma, Daniel and his group started work to enhance the method of troubleshooting and speaking points associated to those property. Upon receiving a ticket, North’s engineering group as soon as spent important time looking by means of Sigma to establish the property referenced within the request. With no direct hyperlink between tickets and these property, decision would usually be delayed, and work can be duplicated.
“It was actually inefficient,” Daniel shared. “Typically even the identical engineers can be engaged on the identical undertaking, and so they didn’t even understand it as a result of a number of tickets have been submitted by a number of folks.”
By integrating the Atlan Chrome Extension with Jira and Slack, North’s information customers may elevate points immediately of their software of selection, with a hyperlink to particular property included mechanically, permitting Information Engineers to know when and the place points occurred.
For information customers in Sigma, this integration provided a complete historical past of all Jira tickets and Slack conversations regarding particular information property, and for engineers, a method of stopping duplicate tickets or a number of engineers engaged on the identical situation, and time financial savings by higher understanding related, previous points.
Eliminating duplicate work, or eliminating your engineers engaged on the identical undertaking with out realizing about it? These effectivity beneficial properties are big, and the financial savings add up actually rapidly.”
Daniel Dowdy, Vice President, Information Analytics & Governance
Introducing Snowflake Dynamic Information Masking
As a funds resolution supplier, North handles huge quantities of delicate monetary information. Whereas enhancements in information discovery and enrichment are essential, Daniel’s group realized the worth of those enhancements can be restricted to a small variety of trusted customers with out sturdy information governance and documentation securing these property.
To safe delicate information and implement stringent entry insurance policies, North’s information group selected to make the most of Dynamic Information Masking with Snowflake, providing complete column-level masking for delicate information, and policy-based management for customers.
With the intention to make the most of Dynamic Information Masking, Daniel and his group started the method of figuring out particular information property that these insurance policies would apply to. Given the dimensions and complexity of their information panorama, they acknowledged {that a} granular, asset-by-asset method can be not solely time-consuming, however doubtlessly error-prone. Trying to find a solution to establish and safe these property programmatically, Daniel turned to Atlan.
“How do you discover and tag hundreds of property? You don’t Google it, you Atlan it. It’s actually easy,” Daniel defined.
Governing Hundreds of Property, on the Click on of a Button
Reasonably than painstakingly finding these property, then tagging them one-by-one, their group utilized Atlan Playbooks, rules-based bulk automations that would establish hundreds of property based mostly on chosen standards, then mechanically apply actions, reminiscent of including chosen tags and insurance policies.
By the point I added a filter, Atlan scanned our 225,000 property and nearly instantly discovered 45 matches. As I modified the filters so as to add new ones, it consistently up to date to point out me what number of property meet that standards. Hours of handbook analysis and testing, earlier than Atlan, was transformed into a pair seconds.”
Daniel Dowdy, Vice President, Information Analytics & Governance
Rapidly figuring out hundreds of property to better-secure, Daniel’s group used Playbooks to construct workflows that might mechanically apply the appropriate tag to the appropriate asset, then propagate that tag upstream, on the click on of a button. Then, with Atlan’s Two-way Tag Sync, these tags would function the muse for Dynamic Information Masking at North, mechanically making use of masking insurance policies based mostly on how and from whom information was queried.
By combining Atlan Playbooks, Two-way Tag Sync, and Automated Lineage with Snowflake Dynamic Information Masking, North efficiently ruled hundreds of information property in report time with a programmatic method, avoiding the painstaking work of figuring out, tagging, and recording insurance policies one-by-one throughout a 225,000-asset panorama.
With out Atlan tracing upstream and downstream, serving to us perceive potential publicity and implement insurance policies, this course of would have been sophisticated and really handbook. However with Atlan, you can’t solely hint information lineage and arrange the complexity, however you possibly can see reputation and utilization metrics that assist prioritize the place efforts are wanted essentially the most, or the place the largest influence might be made.”
Daniel Dowdy, Vice President, Information Analytics & Governance
By way of this programmatic method, Daniel’s group affected a 700% enhance in tagged property, considerably enhancing their safety and compliance, and paving the way in which for a big enhance within the variety of their colleagues trusted to make use of information.
“We’ve used Atlan to spice up the velocity and accuracy of our asset tagging by greater than 700% since implementation,” Daniel shared. “With the flexibility to find information sooner, apply tags, and reverse sync that information again into Snowflake, we added greater than 2,000 governance property in underneath a yr. That’s simply the tip of the iceberg.”
Hundreds of thousands in Worth, in Months
In lower than one yr of being outfitted with Atlan, Daniel and his group remodeled the way in which North makes use of and governs its information, unlocking the potential for thousands and thousands in worth by means of effectivity beneficial properties, price reductions, and enhanced threat mitigation.
By thoughtfully converging essential context about Snowflake and Sigma right into a user-friendly information base in Atlan, North’s technical and enterprise customers are projecting financial savings of $1.4 million per yr in effort by means of accelerated information discovery and diminished effort understanding lineage.
“That’s $1.4 million of duplicate work, handbook and tedious analysis. That’s time we are able to now spend on altering issues, versus attempting to navigate information prefer it’s the web in 1997,” Daniel shared.
And with built-in insights in Atlan, close to–immediately figuring out pointless spend of their Snowflake atmosphere, Daniel and his group estimate an annual price financial savings of greater than $20,000 by deprecating greater than 10,000 idle property and inefficient queries.
“That financial savings was mainly handed to us on a silver platter with no further work,” Daniel remarked.
Past price financial savings and effectivity beneficial properties, and existential to an organization that processes delicate monetary information, lies important threat mitigation. By rising their tagged property by 700%, rapidly and in bulk, North’s governance and safety improved nearly in a single day, to the tune of thousands and thousands of {dollars} in diminished threat.
We’ve been in a position to scale back our threat and publicity by thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of {dollars}.”
Daniel Dowdy, Vice President, Information Analytics & Governance
A 200% Enhance in Self-service Analytics, with Room to Develop
Whereas these enhancements are spectacular, whether or not in information discovery, with context about their information property supporting a 200% year-over-year enhance in self-service analytics adoption, or in Information Governance, driving thousands and thousands in threat mitigation, it’s the mixture of those applications that’s set to remodel the way in which North makes use of information.
By affecting a leap ahead in the way in which that North manages entry management and ensures safety throughout a large information property, the way in which Daniel’s group defines a trusted person of information is evolving and increasing considerably.
“Information Governance gave us the arrogance to soundly and securely share extra information in Sigma,” Daniel defined.Now assured that essentially the most delicate information is safe, appropriately tagged, and ruled by the appropriate entry coverage, North can confidently supply information and self-service analytics capabilities to extra enterprise customers than ever earlier than, enhancing the already important worth they’ve yielded from combining Atlan, Snowflake, and Sigma.
We have been in a state of near-paralysis attempting to manually decide who ought to see what. Using a mix of improved governance insurance policies, tags, and dynamic information masking, we have been in a position to make use of information with confidence. As a result of enhanced person expertise, mixed with the elevated information availability, we anticipate to proceed or exceed our self-service atmosphere development charges.”
Daniel Dowdy, Vice President, Information Analytics & Governance
Mere years after adopting Snowflake as the muse of their Fashionable Information Stack, and fewer than a yr after adopting Atlan, North’s information property has remodeled from, as Daniel described, a “Information Desert” into an “Oasis.”
“Because the information by no means leaves our umbrella, there’s no extra flat recordsdata which can be shared,” Daniel defined. “There’s no extra a number of variations of the reality, and our information has a stage of confidence, leading to sooner and extra knowledgeable choices.”
Regardless of the unbelievable accomplishments of North’s information group, constructing self-service analytics and Information Governance capabilities from scratch in report time, Daniel believes there’s nonetheless a lot extra to perform.
Within the months and years to return, their information group is keen to make use of Atlan AI to simplify advanced queries into pure language, and speed up the enrichment of their information property. And by supporting a rising variety of Information Stewards to independently share and doc information, a extra knowledgeable and empowered neighborhood of enterprise customers is rising.
Reflecting on their journey with Atlan, Daniel emphasised that past the appropriate expertise, group, and technique lies a vital aspect: The suitable partnership.
Some of the necessary issues about Atlan has been the folks. They’re information those who have labored within the trade, perceive what you’re going by means of, and perceive what you’re speaking about from the second you begin the dialog.”
Daniel Dowdy, Vice President, Information Analytics & Governance
Photograph by Jonas Leupe on Unsplash
