Innovative Client Solutions
Tangible Outcomes Through Technical Innovation
It’s one thing to claim to be innovative. Without real-world examples of innovative client solutions that’s just a story. At VLDB we like to ‘walk the walk’, and not just ‘talk the talk’.
Unlike most consulting companies, we’re also ‘all about client solutions’ rather than products. To back up those claims of innovation, here are a few examples of the kind of solutions we’ve delivered for clients. Enjoy!
Category
Retail
Background
Client mainframe outage resulted in failover to hot standby mainframe.
Problem
Production ETL jobs unable to run from failover mainframe due to lack of proprietary channel connection to Data Warehouse appliance.
Solution
- Production ETL jobs reviewed & categorised into high, medium & low priority
- High priority ETL jobs converted from IBM mainframe Job Control Language (JCL) to Linux bash scripts.
- SQL scripts amended to reference objects in Linux files system not IBM mainframe DD names
- High priority ETL jobs executed from Linux
Outcome
No delay to the production ETL schedule or interruption of analytics service to business users.
Category
Manufacturing
Background
Client requirement was to analyse web site visitor logs in support of customer journey analysis.
Problem
Data volumes, data complexity & time to deploy required internal IT infrastructure deemed to be blockers.
Solution
- High specification Apple MacPro procured & deployed in client business environment
- VMWare virtual machine supporting Open Source Greenplum configured to run on MacPro
- Data loaded to Greenplum from various production web sites
- Customer journey algorithms developed against billions of rows of raw log data
Outcome
Client deployed web site enhancements to influence buying process through deep understanding of customer journey.
Category
Retail
Background
Client decided to migrate from their legacy on-prem Data Warehouse appliance to a cloud-based alternative.
Problem
The legacy on-prem Data Warehouse systems had reached end-of-life (EOL). No support was available from the legacy supplier during the Data Warehouse migration.
Solution
- Hardware & software specification and hardware failure log audit of legacy systems performed
- Legacy spare parts supply identified & secured
- Local supply of most frequent failure components maintained locally
- Hands-on hardware support provided for all legacy servers & storage during migration
Outcome
Migration to target cloud-based Data Warehouse solution completed smoothly with no interruption to legacy service despite numerous hardware failures.
Category
Gaming
Background
Client required an enhanced analytics capability in support of a major new leisure development.
Problem
Cost constraints, large data volumes and a strategic objective to move away from on-prem systems restricted the analytic platform options.
Solution
- High Performance Computing (HPC) sovereign cloud platform identified, tested & approved
- Open Source Greenplum analytic software deployed as multi-node cluster on HPC cloud
- Legacy data loaded & ETL jobs developed to deliver real-time data loads
- Coaching, formal training & ETL break-fix provided as required to allow client to become self-sufficient
Outcome
Migration to target cloud-based Data Warehouse solution completed smoothly with no interruption to legacy service despite numerous hardware failures.
Design & development of a greenfield EDW using Open Source Greenplum deployed via a sovereign HPC cloud.
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