Data is stored and processed directly in the main memory with Exasol’s in-memory technology and parallel processing. Thousands of Otto users can access the data at the same time without sacrificing speed or performance

Quicker analysis and reporting: 

Intelligent algorithms monitor and auto-tune database performance. Otto’s teams can integrate a variety of programming languages via user defined functions (UDF) 

50% savings:

with Hadoop, Tableau, and other frameworks for data preparation

Integration

Otto can scale with Exasol’s architecture flexibility  

Cloud-ready:

 for Otto teams to access data and coordinate campaigns

GUIs

More brands and partners

With its new Exasol architecture, Otto teams report: 

Benefits for Otto

Otto planned to use Exasol as an access layer, taking data from a data lake and warehouse to process reports. But the feeder system data structures retained twice as much data, requiring an overly complex loading path. They needed a solution behind the data warehouse to get data to Tableau quickly. 

The challenge

Midway through the PoC, Otto replaced its data warehouse with Exasol, retaining Hadoop as a raw data store. We quickly learned Otto’s security requirements meant going beyond a new database. Together with their team, we implemented a spark connector as part of a joint hackathon with Otto, Exasol, and partners. 

The solution

Data warehouse replacement at half the cost  

Otto GmbH is Germany’s largest e-commerce site for home and living, and one of the first retailers to take its mail-order business online more than 25 years ago. Today, customers of the Hamburg-based company search 3 million products from 6,800 brands, and make 55 percent of purchases on smartphones and tablets. Otto’s data scientists use object-centric processing to analyze customer interactions across channels for a personalized shopping experience. Its team turned to Exasol as they began to process increasing volumes of data.

Andreas Bonet

“Exasol’s analytics database proved impressive. Primarily due to an excellent price-performance ratio: low costs coupled with exceptional performance and integration with Hadoop.”

Reports that used to be ready at midday are now available by 5:30 a.m.

20 users have direct access to Exasol, with 100 more using dashboards, cubes, and reports 

ETL processes that used to take 45 minutes now take no more than 15 


All data can be broken down to individual marketing channels by margin and product 


Products are forecasted and automatically delivered to the warehouse — when a customer clicks on an item, it’s going to be available 


Flaconi decides which products to promote to which customers on its site or in Google ads based on data and customer behavior

Benefits for Flaconi

Flaconi’s legacy system had reached its limit — they needed a scalable analytics database to deliver reports in the right format at the right time, and simulation models to track performance indicators. They also wanted to enable employees to use self-service BI, accessing existing data easily for daily, better-informed decision-making.

After a short test phase, Flaconi opted to run Exasol’s full database application on the cloud and AWS, based on speed, the product roadmap, UDFs (User Defined Functions), and “the human factor,” something Martin Nguyen, Director of Strategy, Data, and Analytics said was key. Flaconi uses Python, Pentaho Data Integration, and AWS services for data integration. The company migrated from Power BI to Tableau, and the Exasol database currently hosts around three terabytes of data. Migration took six months from setting up the server to going live. Nguyen says: “Being able to genuinely transfer all the logics from the old database to the new one was important to us. We didn’t want to go live with less than what we had before.”

Faster reporting enabling innovation

Flaconi is one of Germany‘s leading online beauty retailers, offering more than 720 brands and 45,000 fragrance, skin, hair, and natural cosmetics products. Flaconi’s goal is “unconditional customer service” and to be the most innovative online beauty store in Europe.

More users and faster reporting help German beauty retailer prioritize customer UX and innovation 

Martin Nguyen

“Exasol has become our key tool. Everything we do is based on the database.”

Data is available to decision makers and across the organization

Data availability

Data for internal systems reporting is no more than 24 hours old

Constantly updates

Visualizations allow end users to utilize data from summary level detail

Visualization empowers

Centralized one tool for all analytical data processing needs 

Unified single hub

With Exasol in place, Piedmont Healthcare’s executive leadership can access data to make informed, patient-focused decisions. More than 300 staff are now using Tableau Desktop – up from 24 people. This democratization of data has led to greater staff autonomy — teams are making their systems and data work for them.

 Exasol helps Piedmont 12x internal Tableau adoption

in one year

Reduction in harm

across 11 hospitals

Infection rate across

processed and analyzed

Data points

in 1 year

Patients served

After a period of significant growth, Piedmont needed to better understand its data — but its MS SQL Server system just couldn’t scale, leading to security, speed, and cost issues.

While keeping Tableau’s front-end user interface for visualizations, Piedmont replaced its data warehouse component with Exasol.

Piedmont Healthcare achieved 40% harm reduction. 24 to 311 users on Tableau.

Like many providers, they store an immense amount of data — in Piedmont’s case: 22,000 fields from 30 sources, or 555 billion data points. Piedmont’s leadership set an ambitious goal: reduce recidivism from infections to 0%. We worked with their team to get the right data to hospital decision makers — and reduce harm by 40%.<br />
<br />
While keeping Tableau’s front-end user interface for visualizations, Piedmont replaced its data warehouse component with Exasol.

Piedmont is a non-profit healthcare provider  with 2 million patients across 11 Atlanta-area hospitals. 

Mark Jackson

“With Exasol analytics, we’ve seen significant improvements not only to our bottom line,  but in patient satisfaction.”

Up-to-date data on product availability for an efficient repeat order and restock process

CRM integration for a personalized email program with exclusive offers 

Control of revenue flows and ability to explore new sources of revenue quickly 

Staff time and resource savings in purchasing, auditing, and logistics departments

Benefits for Zalando

in 17 countries

Customers

from 2,500 brands

Products

 in clusters

Memory

a year

Visitors

To streamline transactions with merchants and logistic companies, Zalando needed consistent reporting on products, orders, customers, and deliveries. 

Zalando integrated Exasol into its existing data warehouse and front-end BI tools as an analytic layer. Its in-memory system now consists of several clusters with 7TBs of memory. Low administration overhead, security, and a good price-performance ratio were also critical. 