How we’re at the heart of Arvato’s data strategy – notes on the Exasol User Group in Münster
Last week, on February the 13th, I attended an Exasol User Group in Münster, hosted by Arvato.
Arvato is a subsidiary of Bertelsmann and a leading international service provider. They have 70,000 employees working in 40 countries – and they use our data analytics platform for their data strategy.
The major talk “A four year data journey with Exasol” was presented by Arvato representatives – and it was a really to-the-point and informative session:
Our four-year data analytics journey with Avarto
They told us how they started with the challenge of consolidating four business intelligence environments, each with a different data warehouse platform, into a single, centralized environment.
When different vendors were considered (including some of the best-known names in the industry), we were a total outsider. But we won the PoC for two main reasons:
- Stunning performance
- Hassle-free maintenance
That’s how the journey started. They now have 1000+ BI users and 4000+ reports running on our data analytics platform.
The major migration tool they used was our EXPORT / IMPORT functionality with direct connections to the legacy systems.
A customer-focused approach
From the start, performance with our data analytics platform was so good that it there was never any discussion of improving it. However, after three years, growing data volume required a license upgrade. Also, the version upgrade from Exasol 5 to Exasol 6 resulted in some performance improvements.
The speakers emphasized how good the relation between Arvato and the Exasol staff (especially Exasol support) has always been. So that was nice to hear.
Best practices for feature partitioning
After that presentation, Mathias Brink from Exasol took on the question from the user group: “What are best practices for the Exasol 6.1 feature partitioning?”
In his entertaining style, Matze told us essentially that the partition key(s) should be placed on columns that are used for filtering while the system takes care of the rest like determine an appropriate number of partitions.
A relaxed atmosphere – free beer and pizza
The event was complemented by free pizza and beer which was also nice!
Overall, it was a great atmosphere, with a perfect blend of techies discussing database technology with a healthy dollop of good humor. Oh, and I was quite impressed by the story of how Exasol won a PoC against Oracle’s Exadata!
Many thanks to Arvato for hosting this event and to Laura Meier from Exasol for organizing it. Great job!