Swimming In Bad Data
by Steve Yatson, Chief Evangelist
Project Brief
When a global leader in the pool & wellness industry asks you for help, you dive right in. What started out as a cloud migration turned into $2M in annual savings on warranty service that more than paid for a scalable and secure data solution that will last for decades.
The Problem
Struggling with an antiquated monitoring system on their internal NOC, the client suffered numerous device and connectivity limitations. productOps was engaged to migrate the operation to AWS and as always, we started with strategy, and that begins with a look at the data.
First Stop: Data
An analysis of the immediately accessible data led to the realization that pool pumps were failing at a much higher rate than expected. The client had built an expensive pump testing station, yet when sent in for service the pumps appeared to function normally. Through data analysis productOps discovered that all of the returned pumps had experienced a power loss prior to failure. When this event occurred at a particular time, a portion of the firmware was flashed making the pump inoperable. Enter problem number two; trustable data was not readily available and accessible by the right people.
The Solution
Yes we migrated them to a secure and scalable business centric solution built on AWS removing their previous device limitations. But data is the hero in this story. Building in real-time monitoring and notifications and the ability to add unlimited devices and to update those devices at any time meant that device limitations, firmware issues, communication breakdowns, and $2M in unnecessary warranty charges were a thing of the past. And living squarely in the realm of Data Driven Decision Making and exceptional customer service was now the future.
Conclusion
By working with the client to define a data strategy that included data analysis early in the project, productOps was able to discover unknown issues that were addressed by the correct solution. This not only led to a smooth migration and a secure and scalable data solution, but Millions of dollars of savings annually.
