Summary
A prominent banking institution in Saudi Arabia partnered with Evalueserve to design and implement a modern data architecture using the Denodo Platform, which is the leading logical data management platform. The bank struggled with fragmented data sources, performance bottlenecks, and costly data storage, which hindered business intelligence and customer analytics. Evalueserve's deep financial services and analytics expertise, combined with Denodo's ability to deliver real-time, governed access to data across disparate systems, resulted in a unified semantic layer that seamlessly connected traditional data warehousing and modern data lake technologies. This transformation significantly enhanced performance, reduced costs, and improved the bank’s ability to make timely, data-driven decisions.
Problem
The bank was facing multiple data-related challenges that threatened its competitive position in a rapidly digitizing financial market:
- Inconsistent semantic layer: Ad-hoc report development had created semantic inconsistencies that undermined trust in data across the organization.
- Data warehouse tiers ignored: Reports were often developed in isolation, bypassing the proper data warehouse architecture tiers.
- Limited business user access: Business teams lacked self-service access to critical data needed for financial analysis and customer insights.
- Integration complexity: The bank needed to logically integrate data across systems using a governed, unified access platform - without disrupting existing business processes or incurring the costs of physical data replication.
- Performance constraints: Business intelligence reports often took 5-6 minutes to refresh, frustrating decision-makers and limiting timely financial insights.
- Regulatory reporting requirements: As a financial institution, the bank needed to satisfy central monetary authority requirements for comprehensive historical transaction data access without incurring excessive costs.
Solution
The bank recognized that its data management approach prevented them from serving customers effectively. They enlisted Evalueserve to build a solution to unite their data without halting operations.
Evalueserve mapped the bank's data flows from systems to users, revealing where critical insights remained inaccessible across departments. Instead of proposing a costly infrastructure overhaul, Evalueserve deployed the Denodo Platform to create a governed, unified semantic and data access layer that preserved existing investments while modernizing the bank’s data architecture.
Evalueserve built a logical data architecture with Denodo at the core, enabling seamless, real-time integration across the bank's traditional warehousing and modern data lake environments - without the need for data replication. The team built a centralized semantic layer using Denodo’s data virtualization technology, aligned with banking compliance standards and operational requirements, enabling trusted, governed access to data across business functions.
The team then addressed a critical challenge—migrating 700 existing Tableau reports to Denodo. They transferred these reports in measured phases, testing each batch thoroughly before proceeding. All new report development was directed to consume data through Denodo’s real-time, metadata-driven access layer, improving data consistency, performance and governance across analytical workloads.
Key elements of the implementation included:
- Real-time, logical integration between Teradata and Cloudera’s data lake through Denodo’s logical data management capabilities
- Strategic data placement with frequent access data in high-performance systems
- Seamless offloading of historical data to low-cost storage while maintaining consistent, governed access for users through Denodo
- Cross-environment deployment spanning development, testing, and production
To ensure enterprise reliability, Evalueserve implemented robust security measures across all environments. The deployment included SSL encryption, optimized virtual data processors, JVM tuning, Active Directory authentication, query optimization, and proactive monitoring through Denodo's platform.
Impact
The transformed data architecture delivered substantial business value across multiple dimensions:
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Optimized performance
Report refresh went from 6-7 minutes initially to 60-70 seconds.
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Significant time reduction
Business teams gained self-service, governed access to trusted data, significantly reducing the time needed for analysis and decision-making.
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Scalable infrastructure
The bank established a highly scalable platform for hosting and integrating multiple data sources across the enterprise.
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Cost optimization
Reduced strain on the data warehouse environment brought significant cost savings by optimizing the use of expensive data warehouse appliances.
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Enhanced data governance
Denodo’s unified semantic layer improved data trust, lineage, and compliance, enabling more accurate insights and team collaboration.
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Regulatory compliance
The solution enabled comprehensive reporting for the central monetary authority while optimizing infrastructure costs.
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Foundation for advanced analytics
The integrated data layer created opportunities for cross-domain analytics and customer behavior analysis, and future AI use cases - previously blocked by fragmented data silos.
The success of this data virtualization initiative established a foundation for the bank's broader digital transformation journey, positioning them better to leverage financial and customer data for competitive advantage while managing infrastructure costs effectively.
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Overview & Impact
A leading financial institution collaborated with Evalueserve to modernize its data architecture using the Denodo Platform. This transformation improved performance, reduced costs, and enhanced the bank's data-driven decision-making capabilities.
