Combining Atlan, Snowflake, and Sigma to Democratize Entry to Effectively-governed Information
At a Look
- North, a number one funds answer supplier processing over $100 billion in annual transactions, aimed to enhance information discovery and governance atop their Snowflake- and Sigma-powered fashionable information stack
- Adopting Atlan as their energetic metadata platform, North has since achieved end-to-end visibility of 225,000 information belongings, 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 belongings which has contributed to mitigating hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in danger
For over 30 years, North has established itself as a number one funds answer 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 via cost gateways, cell 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 enormous information property comprising 225,000 belongings, totaling 41 terabytes on Snowflake, the accountability 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 inner information customers and their flagship merchandise.
What do 20 subsidiaries and types, and 100,000+ retailers, imply for our group? It means now we have numerous 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 every little thing from transaction monitoring and reporting to stock administration and fraud safety. To ship vital, transaction-level reporting to their prospects, 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 prospects,” 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 reviews 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 battling 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 fingers proved troublesome.
After Snowflake + Sigma, Correct, Actual-time Information
In 2019, North adopted Snowflake as their enterprise information lake, considerably bettering 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 recent ELT processes.
“We went from a ‘Information Desert,’ the place retrieving info took days, to an oasis the place information was accessible in actual time, and we may question it in seconds,” mentioned Daniel.
Whereas Snowflake represented a big leap ahead within the availability and reliability of knowledge, Daniel’s group had been nonetheless accountable 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 instrument 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 fee, 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 fee of greater than 200% year-over-year. Now, Sigma is our self-service analytics platform, and it’s taken numerous burden off our information group.”
Daniel Dowdy, Vice President, Information Analytics & Governance
North has since engineered a contemporary information stack, establishing strong pipelines that seamlessly ingest and replicate information from numerous sources like Oracle, MySQL, Salesforce, and S3. This wealth of knowledge is then channeled into highly effective instruments corresponding to 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 knowledge governance and discovery.
“What turned the issue was tips on how to discover the information, and tips on how to govern it properly,” Daniel shared. “Atlan turned the central level addressing all of those issues.”
Unlocking Snowflake and Sigma with Atlan
Connecting to over 225,000 information belongings 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 had been built-in with Snowflake and Sigma, connecting to over 225,000 belongings. 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 via a number of silos, abruptly making it easy to navigate and perceive their information property.
Atlan began getting us this instant worth via information discovery. The way in which I maintain serious about it was the early days of the web. You had entry to this huge quantity of knowledge, however it was actually laborious to search out. Then, serps made it simple to run a search and discover related content material. For us, Atlan turned Google for Information.”
Daniel Dowdy, Vice President, Information Analytics & Governance
Shifting 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 helpful context unlocked, their subsequent step was to ship it on to enterprise customers, who primarily devour information inside the Sigma, with out switching to different instruments.
“That’s the place Atlan’s Chrome Extension turned a game-changer,” Daniel shared.
Atlan’s Chrome Extension remodeled information consumption inside Sigma. With context about their information belongings—dashboard descriptions, information definitions, tags, lineage, notifications, and upstream high quality indicators—now accessible straight in Sigma, customers now not needed to leap 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 reveals this info, we might simply add it, then customers had been routinely up and operating, bettering their effectivity, and instantly seeing the profit.”
Difficulty Decision for Engineers and Customers, Alike
With context about their information belongings made accessible in Sigma, Daniel and his group started work to enhance the method of troubleshooting and speaking points associated to those belongings. Upon receiving a ticket, North’s engineering group as soon as spent vital time looking out via Sigma to establish the belongings referenced within the request. With no direct hyperlink between tickets and these belongings, decision would typically be delayed, and work could be duplicated.
“It was actually inefficient,” Daniel shared. “Typically even the identical engineers could be engaged on the identical venture, they usually didn’t even comprehend it as a result of a number of tickets had been submitted by a number of folks.”
By integrating the Atlan Chrome Extension with Jira and Slack, North’s information customers may elevate points straight of their instrument of selection, with a hyperlink to particular belongings included routinely, 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 referring to particular information belongings, 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 comparable, previous points.
Eliminating duplicate work, or eliminating your engineers engaged on the identical venture 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 answer 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 could be restricted to a small variety of trusted customers with out strong information governance and documentation securing these belongings.
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.
To be able to make the most of Dynamic Information Masking, Daniel and his group started the method of figuring out particular information belongings that these insurance policies would apply to. Given the size and complexity of their information panorama, they acknowledged {that a} granular, asset-by-asset method could be not solely time-consuming, however probably error-prone. Trying to find a option to establish and safe these belongings programmatically, Daniel turned to Atlan.
“How do you discover and tag 1000’s of belongings? You don’t Google it, you Atlan it. It’s actually easy,” Daniel defined.
Governing 1000’s of Belongings, on the Click on of a Button
Relatively than painstakingly finding these belongings, then tagging them one-by-one, their group utilized Atlan Playbooks, rules-based bulk automations that might establish 1000’s of belongings based mostly on chosen standards, then routinely apply actions, corresponding to including chosen tags and insurance policies.
By the point I added a filter, Atlan scanned our 225,000 belongings and virtually instantly discovered 45 matches. As I modified the filters so as to add new ones, it consistently up to date to indicate me what number of belongings 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
Shortly figuring out 1000’s of belongings to better-secure, Daniel’s group used Playbooks to construct workflows that will routinely apply the fitting tag to the fitting 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, routinely 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 1000’s of knowledge belongings in file 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 cannot solely hint information lineage and set up the complexity, however you possibly can see recognition and utilization metrics that assist prioritize the place efforts are wanted essentially the most, or the place the largest affect could possibly be made.”
Daniel Dowdy, Vice President, Information Analytics & Governance
By this programmatic method, Daniel’s group affected a 700% enhance in tagged belongings, considerably bettering their safety and compliance, and paving the best way 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 power to find information sooner, apply tags, and reverse sync that information again into Snowflake, we added greater than 2,000 governance belongings in beneath 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 best way North makes use of and governs its information, unlocking the potential for hundreds of thousands in worth via effectivity beneficial properties, price reductions, and enhanced danger mitigation.
By thoughtfully converging essential context about Snowflake and Sigma right into a user-friendly data base in Atlan, North’s technical and enterprise customers are projecting financial savings of $1.4 million per yr in effort via accelerated information discovery and lowered 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 making an attempt 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 belongings and inefficient queries.
“That financial savings was principally 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 vital danger mitigation. By rising their tagged belongings by 700%, rapidly and in bulk, North’s governance and safety improved virtually in a single day, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in lowered danger.
We’ve been capable of scale back our danger and publicity by hundreds of thousands and hundreds of 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 belongings supporting a 200% year-over-year enhance in self-service analytics adoption, or in Information Governance, driving hundreds of thousands in danger mitigation, it’s the mixture of those packages that’s set to rework the best way North makes use of information.
By affecting a leap ahead in the best way that North manages entry management and ensures safety throughout an enormous information property, the best way Daniel’s group defines a trusted person of knowledge is evolving and increasing considerably.
“Information Governance gave us the boldness to securely 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 fitting entry coverage, North can confidently supply information and self-service analytics capabilities to extra enterprise customers than ever earlier than, enhancing the already vital worth they’ve yielded from combining Atlan, Snowflake, and Sigma.
We had been in a state of near-paralysis making an attempt to manually decide who ought to see what. Using a mixture of improved governance insurance policies, tags, and dynamic information masking, we had been ready to make use of information with confidence. Because of the enhanced person expertise, mixed with the elevated information availability, we count on 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 Trendy 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.”
“For the reason that information by no means leaves our umbrella, there’s no extra flat recordsdata which are 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 selections.”
Regardless of the unimaginable accomplishments of North’s information group, constructing self-service analytics and Information Governance capabilities from scratch in file time, Daniel believes there’s nonetheless a lot extra to perform.
Within the months and years to return, their information group is raring to make use of Atlan AI to simplify advanced queries into pure language, and speed up the enrichment of their information belongings. And by supporting a rising variety of Information Stewards to independently share and doc data, a extra knowledgeable and empowered group of enterprise customers is rising.
Reflecting on their journey with Atlan, Daniel emphasised that past the fitting expertise, group, and technique lies a vital component: The appropriate partnership.
One of the essential issues about Atlan has been the folks. They’re information those that have labored within the business, perceive what you’re going via, 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