Making data-driven decisions used to be limited to companies with enough resources to procure large systems. But now, data-driven decisions are a necessity to keeping a business running and a modern data stack is making this a reality.

Based on our experience working with hundreds of customers of all sizes, we know that cloud data platform implementations are unique to each customer. Fivetran sits at the heart of the modern data stack and whilst Fivetran implementations can be relatively straightforward, that doesn’t mean that all projects are completely free from challenges. Our solution architects play a vital role in any organization realizing the ROI of their data stack.

In this blog, we discuss how a Fivetran resident solution architect can address the key challenges of data integration implementation.

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Solution time to value

Our data shows that customers get value from their Fivetran investment twice as fast when engaged with a solution architect rather than implementing themselves.

In addition to our award-winning support team and robust documentation library, solution architects are there to advocate for you and be your trusted technical advisor from the very beginning. Every engagement starts with an “Architecture Review” workshop, where our team designs an architectural recommendation that focuses on solving real business challenges. 

One Fivetran customer in the financial services industry worked alongside a solution architect who helped design and set up a complex PrivateLink architecture that facilitates self-serve database onboarding following a “Databases and Networking” workshop. Given the industry this customer operates in, security is always a priority; having a solution architect to discuss any security requirements every step of the way was hugely valuable. Consequently, they were able to quickly and securely onboard some of their most valuable data sources — without needing to invest additional time and resources.

Data team resourcing

Even if you’re lucky enough to be actively expanding your data team, finding the right people is becoming increasingly more difficult. By 2025, Gartner estimates that the majority of organizations will fail to foster the necessary data skills within the workforce to achieve their stated strategic data-driven business goals. Wouldn’t it be great if you could extend your data team without the effort and cost of hiring a full-time employee?

A Fivetran solution architect essentially works as an extension of your data team, with a deep technical understanding of your data architecture and project timelines but with your business outcomes at the forefront of their decisions.

Not only are our solution architects experts of the Fivetran product, but we’ve also seen the evolution of how companies move and work with data, which allows us to help prevent the same mistakes being made and bring tried and tested methodologies to your data stack.

Design your solution for scale 

Failing to design a scalable solution that can accommodate rapid growth in data volumes can lead to data project failures. Ensuring that your data architecture can scale should be a critical business requirement of any data stack. Solution architects at Fivetran work with customers to leverage our range of developer tools and manage their pipelines at scale. The ability to onboard data sources at scale using Fivetran’s REST API is particularly critical for our Powered by Fivetran (PBF) customers. Not only do PBF customers discuss and design for scale with solution architects, they also workshop how to embed Fivetran into their product via Connect Cards, co-branded Connect Cards or via a fully white labeled approach.  

Fivetran’s developer tools are not only leveraged by our PBF customers. In fact, our “Fivetran at Scale” workshop is quite popular amongst many of our customers as the wider industry interest in Infrastructure as Code increases. For example, a Fivetran customer is using Terraform to help move upwards of 20GB of data across 13 database instances every 30 minutes. We also work with customers who are leveraging our Terraform provider to enable their Governance as Code initiatives across their organizations to ensure they remain compliant.

Maximizing your data ROI

Gartner forecasts that expenditure in Cloud Application Services is predicted to grow 17 percent in 2023. At Fivetran, we’re focused on delivering business value. Our solution architects deliver “Cost and Uptime” workshops to ensure that you’re able to build scalable solutions and maximize your return on investment whilst managing your expenditure. 

For example, a solution architect worked with a customer to define a sync strategy across all of their data sources and use cases. For their customer success use case, they needed fresh data every 5 minutes to report on support escalations, whereas for their finance analytics, use case reports were generated every 24 hours. This resulted in a net decrease in their warehouse costs as the customer was loading the data they needed, when they needed it.

Ensuring your data is secure and governed

Through 2025, 80 percent of organizations seeking to scale digital business will fail because they do not take a modern approach to data and analytics governance, according to Gartner. Our solution architects work with customers to ensure that data governance requirements are assessed at every part of the project to ensure the current and future success of their data projects. 

For example, one of our customers worked with a solution architect to define a role-based access control strategy from the start of their project, enabling the team to give all business users access to Fivetran but only to the specific data sources that were appropriate to their role. This allowed business users to self-serve the data they needed and resulted in widespread adoption and the overall project being delivered ahead of schedule, as the data team was no longer a bottleneck.

These are just some examples of how solution architects are supporting our customers with implementing robust and scalable data platforms. Please reach out to us at services@fivetran.com if you’d like to discuss your unique Fivetran implementation requirements.

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