The SME Blog

ThoughtSpot Migration

Written by SME Solutions Group | Jan 12, 2022 7:48:00 PM

Improving the power of ThoughtSpot while drastically reducing infrastructure costs by migrating from ThoughtSpot Falcon to Embrace.

Customer Story At a Glance:

Industry: Business Services
Use Case: Migration
Key Tech: ThoughtSpot, Snowflake

The Results:

  • ETL and Data Modeling. Simplified process and improved automation.
  • Performance, Flexibility, & Scalability. Falcon requires server upgrades and downtime. Embrace scales up/down in minutes.
  • Costs Savings on Infrastructure. Less RAM requirements and a “not always on” approach.
  • Real-time capabilities. Reload minimums from an hour to minutes, enabling new insights.

About the Customer

A business services firm with a global mindset. Services range from human resources and talent to facilities and maintenance to financial strategy and support – from Business Intelligence to systems literacy; from legal counsel to strategic communications – and just about anywhere in between.

Why ThoughtSpot

ThoughtSpot's powerful analytics capabilities empower the customer to delve into vast amounts of data effortlessly. With tables containing over 5 billion records, traditional BI tools struggled to handle the sheer volume efficiently. However, ThoughtSpot's intuitive interface and advanced functionalities made it a seamless process for users of all skill levels to navigate and derive insights from the data. This user-friendly approach not only accelerated the adoption of the tool but also enhanced the overall data analysis experience, setting it apart from other BI solutions on the market.

The Challenge

The customer's expansive ThoughtSpot Falcon environment, consisting of over 10 nodes on AWS, had become a financial burden due to skyrocketing infrastructure costs. Despite the vast capabilities of Falcon, many of the use cases did not necessitate maximum performance, leading to inefficiencies in cost management. Additionally, the larger tables within the environment were inadvertently locking Falcon into higher performance levels, further exacerbating the cost issue.

The Solution

With the help of SME Solutions Group, the customer explored options around how to reduce costs while keeping the same ThoughtSpot performance level. The first option would have been to introduce server scheduling. This was not plausible because they have users across the world.

The second option was to migrate from Falcon to Embrace and connect to their Snowflake cloud data warehouse. The migration option was chosen as the solution because:

  • Embrace has far less RAM requirements.
  • Potential to reduce footprint to one server in cloud environment.
  • Relevant data had already been consolidated in Snowflake.

The Benefits


By migrating from Falcon to Embrace on ThoughtSpot Cloud, the customer not only eliminated the need to manage any servers in AWS but also experienced a significant reduction in costs related to hosting and management. With their data now securely residing in Snowflake, they gained the ability to finely tune costs and optimize performance for each data set through a robust warehouse strategy. This seamless transition to Embrace not only streamlined their operations but also provided them with greater control and efficiency in managing their data analytics infrastructure.

 

This was the smoothest migration we have ever completed. We have had upgrades that were harder than this.

 

 

About SME Solutions Group, Inc.

SME works with organizations across industries to bring a lasting and modern approach to Business Intelligence (BI). SME's team of certified analysts, architects, admins and trainers holistically approach pain points to find solutions in areas of cloud transformation, data literacy, data governance, software support and assessment. With core values of embracing the importance of data, SME carefully chooses technologies that provide insights and clarity to its clients. With extensive expertise, clients are provided a seamless integration of their BI platforms and newfound capabilities of working with data.