Our customer is a leading global healthcare company focused on developing innovative medicines to improve and extend people’s lives. With a strong foundation in research and science, they specialize in critical therapeutic areas including oncology, neuroscience, immunology, and cardiovascular disease. The company combines advanced technology, data science, and a commitment to access to deliver high-impact treatments to patients worldwide.
Like many large enterprises, their data infrastructure had evolved into a federated model with thousands of engineers across multiple business units, each operating with varying levels of cloud optimization expertise and accountability.
The Challenge: No Visibility or Accountability
The company entered their optimization journey facing significant challenges across their federated data estate. While platform teams funded Databricks and Snowflake infrastructure, individual use case teams operated without requirements to implement optimization recommendations. This organizational structure created critical gaps:
Technical Challenges
- Poor visibility: Jobs frequently ran long or failed without clear correlation to root causes
- Inefficient configurations: Clusters were suboptimally configured, leading to resource waste
- Reactive troubleshooting: Teams spent valuable time firefighting issues rather than preventing them
- Performance bottlenecks: Critical workflows took hours to complete, impacting business operations
Financial Challenges
- Uncontrolled spend: Executives lacked real-time insight into cloud costs and efficiency metrics
- Budget pressure: Strict budget caps required immediate, demonstrable ROI
- Waste identification: Recurring inefficiencies burned budget without delivering value
- Accountability gaps: No clear ownership model for optimization across federated teams
Organizational Challenges
- Complex federated structure: Thousands of engineers across multiple business units
- Change management burden: Traditional approaches would require massive organizational buy-in
- Resource constraints: Limited bandwidth for large-scale transformation initiatives
- Urgency requirements: Need for fast, tangible results to justify continued investment
The company needed a solution that could provide end-to-end visibility into workloads, costs, and performance while delivering measurable savings quickly—all without disrupting their existing federated operating model.
The Solution: A Lean Center of Excellence Approach
Unravel Data approached this engagement with an innovative, action-oriented model specifically designed to overcome the pharmaceutical company’s federated structure and strict budget constraints. Rather than attempting to drive adoption across thousands of engineers, the teams established a streamlined three-person Center of Excellence (CoE):
Team Structure
- One Unravel professional services engineer: Dedicated to optimization analysis and platform support
- Two Customer operations team members: Part-time focus on implementing recommendations and managing approvals
Strategic Approach
The CoE concentrated on infrastructure-level optimizations that the platform group could approve and implement quickly, without requiring buy-in from every individual use case team. This approach provided several key advantages:
- Minimal disruption: No changes required to existing development workflows
- Rapid implementation: Platform-level changes could be executed immediately
- Broad impact: Infrastructure optimizations affected multiple workloads simultaneously
- Clear ownership: The CoE handled everything from analysis to execution
Technology Implementation
Unravel embedded its Data Observability and FinOps Platform to provide real-time visibility into:
- Spend tracking: Real-time cost monitoring across all workloads
- Efficiency metrics: Performance indicators tied to business outcomes
- Savings attribution: Clear proof of value delivered by optimization efforts
- Executive reporting: Financial oversight tools for leadership teams
Actionable Recommendations That Drive Implementation
A critical advantage of Unravel’s platform was how it transformed complex optimization work into simple, executable actions. Rather than requiring the CoE team to perform extensive manual analysis or trial-and-error troubleshooting, Unravel’s AI-powered engine automatically identified inefficiencies and delivered specific, ready-to-implement recommendations. Each recommendation included exact configuration parameters, precise query rewrites, and estimated cost and performance impact—eliminating guesswork and dramatically reducing implementation time.
This actionability was essential to the engagement’s success. The platform answered the fundamental questions—what went wrong, why, and what to do about it—automatically, enabling the two-person customer operations team to quickly execute optimizations across hundreds of workloads without requiring deep expertise in each one. Instead of spending weeks analyzing issues, the team could review Unravel’s recommendations and implement proven solutions in minutes, accelerating time-to-value and making the lean team structure viable.
This lean model minimized organizational lift while accelerating time to value, demonstrating how large-scale optimization outcomes could be achieved without massive change management initiatives.
Results: Extraordinary ROI from Minimal Investment
The Center of Excellence model delivered immediate and substantial impact, proving that focused expertise could unlock seven-figure value with minimal organizational disruption.
Databricks Optimization Results
Financial Impact:
- $725K in realized savings by optimizing 1,471 jobs
- $295K in additional identified savings with total annualized savings projected at $1.14M
- 5.95x ROI on a $192K license investment
- 2-month payback period on the entire Databricks investment
Performance Improvements:
- 97% runtime reduction: One critical workflow optimized from 17 hours to 31 minutes
- 98% cost reduction on the same workflow
- Eliminated recurring waste: Including a failing job that was burning $700 per month
- 70-90% cost reduction achieved on targeted jobs
Snowflake Optimization Results
Rapid Value Delivery:
- $245K in documented savings within five months of production use
- $300K-400K projected true savings once algorithmic tracking is fully applied
- Strong ROI: Significant returns against a $200K investment
- Proactive optimization: Enabled identification and remediation of inefficiencies before they became costly problems
Strategic Outcomes
Organizational Benefits:
- Minimal disruption: Thousands of engineers continued normal operations
- Scalable model: Proven approach that can be expanded across additional platforms
- Executive visibility: Real-time insights into spend and performance for leadership
- Cultural shift: From reactive firefighting to proactive optimization
Technical Benefits:
- Infrastructure optimization: Platform-level improvements benefiting all workloads
- Automated recommendations: AI-powered insights reducing manual analysis time
- Performance monitoring: Continuous visibility into workload efficiency
- Waste elimination: Systematic identification and removal of inefficiencies
Key Success Factors
Several critical elements contributed to the success of this engagement:
1. Right-Sized Team Structure
The three-person CoE provided the perfect balance of expertise and agility. One dedicated Unravel expert ensured deep platform knowledge, while two part-time customer team members provided organizational knowledge and implementation capability.
2. Infrastructure-First Approach
By focusing on platform-level optimizations rather than application-specific changes, the team could deliver broad impact without requiring consensus from hundreds of development teams.
3. Real-Time Visibility
Executive dashboards and ROI tracking provided immediate visibility into results, building confidence and support for continued optimization efforts.
4. Federated-Friendly Model
The solution respected the company’s existing organizational structure while still delivering enterprise-wide benefits, proving that optimization doesn’t require organizational transformation.
5. Fast Time-to-Value
Achieving measurable results within the first two months created momentum and demonstrated the value of the approach, securing continued investment and support.
Lessons Learned and Best Practices
This engagement demonstrates several key principles for successful cloud optimization in large, federated organizations:
Start Small, Think Big
A lean team focused on high-impact optimizations can deliver extraordinary results without massive organizational change. The key is identifying the right leverage points for maximum impact.
Platform-Level Optimization First
Infrastructure improvements provide broad benefits across multiple teams and workloads, making them ideal for federated environments where coordinating application-level changes is challenging.
Executive Visibility Drives Success
Real-time visibility and clear ROI metrics ensure leadership support and create accountability for continued optimization efforts.
Federated Organizations Need Federated Solutions
Successful optimization strategies must respect existing organizational structures while still delivering enterprise-wide benefits.
Looking Forward: Scaling Success
The success of this initial engagement has created a foundation for expanded optimization efforts:
Immediate Opportunities
- Code-level optimizations: Significant additional savings available through application-specific improvements
- Additional platforms: Expanding the CoE model to other cloud data platforms
- Automated remediation: Implementing auto-actions for common optimization scenarios
Long-Term Strategy
- Self-service optimization: Empowering individual teams with optimization tools and training
- Continuous improvement: Building optimization into standard development workflows
- Enterprise-wide adoption: Scaling successful practices across all business units
Conclusion
This pharmaceutical company’s success demonstrates that cloud optimization doesn’t require massive organizational transformation or disruptive change management initiatives. With the right approach, a small team of experts can deliver multi-million dollar value while respecting existing organizational structures and operational constraints.
The key insights from this engagement are clear:
- Lean teams with the right expertise can deliver extraordinary results
- Infrastructure-level optimizations provide broad impact with minimal disruption
- Real-time visibility and ROI tracking are essential for sustained success
- Federated organizations can achieve enterprise-wide benefits without centralized control
For organizations facing similar challenges with cloud data costs and performance, this case study provides a proven roadmap for achieving significant ROI with minimal organizational risk.
Ready to achieve similar results in your organization? Unravel’s Data Observability Platform helps enterprises optimize Databricks and Snowflake workloads without requiring massive organizational change. Whether you’re dealing with a federated data structure, facing budget pressure, or simply need better visibility into cloud costs and performance, our lean Center of Excellence approach delivers measurable ROI in months, not years.
Contact us today to discuss how Unravel can help your team unlock multi-million dollar savings with minimal resource investment.