A cloud-based data warehouse to facilitate business automation

A cloud data warehouse is a centralized repository that provides data storage, analysis, reporting, and more. More precisely, data warehouses are essential enterprise solutions, which store data gathered from multiple heterogeneous sources — human resources, customer management, accounting, marketing, and others, without requiring additional investment in expensive on-premises hardware and infrastructure.

A cloud data warehouse is implemented to facilitate business performance, flexibility, scalability, among others. Strategic-thinking organizations moving towards legacy modernization also implement advanced technology that drives predictive analytics, data capturing and visualization, and other cutting-edge capabilities.

As stated by Allied Market Research:

• The global data warehousing market size was valued at over $21 billion in 2019, and is being predicted to reach $51 billion by 2028, growing at a CAGR of 10,7% from 2020 to 2028
• The segment is projected to prosper in the upcoming years after recovering from the COVID-19 crisis

The most important trends can be reduced to:

• Cloud-only warehousing — 53%
• Hybrid and multi-cloud warehousing — 28%
• Edge analytics — 48%
• Real-time analytics — 37%
• AI/ML capabilities in warehousing — 45%
• Data quality and governance — 28%

The project: Our goals and results

Our company was contacted by a medical network supporting practices providing professional fertility services. Our engineers were involved to build a cloud-based data warehouse to enable data management and reporting.

Until cooperation, all information was stored in the product system, requiring day-to-day manual processing. This approach was inefficient and posed serious risks.

Our team has covered:

• Software development — we designed a cloud-based data warehouse to optimize data management
• Business automation — we prepared data marts to minimize unjustified resource-allocation

The cooperation has resulted in the quick implementation of a data warehouse and the successful separation of sensitive business information.

The solution

In just 6 months, we implemented a reliable data warehouse that streamlines data storage and management. By applying extensive expertise in delivering data warehouses, we optimized internal processes associated with employee and customer management, accounting, marketing, and other business operations, which require real-time insight.

The processed data comprises:

• Appointment data
• Medical data
• Financial data
• Business analytics

The design and implementation of the data warehouse

Data ETL

At this project stage, our team:

• Extracted the .bak and .trn files from the external storage to the AWS S3
• Moved and restored extracted .bak and .trn files in the MSSQL Server
• Exported data from the MSSQL Server
• Loaded data to the AWS Redshift stage layer

For seamless data extraction, our engineers:

• For quick data integration, we utilized Glue Jobs using Python
• For continuous data extraction, we utilized Step Functions as a workflow orchestrator

Data warehouse: Software development

We built a cloud-based data warehouse by utilizing Redshift Procedures covered by Glue Jobs.

Reporting layer: Software development

We prepared data marts and aggregates to provide convenient monitoring:

• The client has access to the tables in AWS Redshift, which can be worked with in Microsoft Excel
• The client can access necessary information from the AWS Redshift by using Azure AD

Platform support

At this project stage, we provide ongoing support to resolve any discrepancies that might potentially occur.

Custom cloud DWH architecture by Abto Software

The challenges

As we have involved experienced specialists, there were only two minor challenges we faced:

1. To provide software development, our team had to dive into the specifics of the business serviced, which required both dedication and resources
2. Due to data sensitivity, our engineers had limited access to the data collected

Summing up

By leveraging domain-specific knowledge and experience in providing full-cycle custom software development, we built a cloud-based data warehouse, which drives business performance, flexibility, scalability, and security.

After resolving distributed architecture and other common challenges, which often come with cloud migration, we provided the client with a robust solution, which eliminates manual processing and enables data analytics.

We believe data warehousing is an essential process for every strategic-thinking organization:

• From 2010 to 2020, the global data created increased from 1.2 to 58 trillion gigabytes worldwide, which makes for an 5,000% growth
• In 2022, over 60% of all data managed by corporations has been stored in the cloud

By utilizing the delivered data warehouse, our client now enjoys multiple benefits:

• Versatile architecture
• Thought-out resource-allocation
• Data quality and accessibility
• HIPAA compliance