Rackspace Technology · Technology · Seattle, WA · 30 weeks
Rackspace Technology System Consolidation case study
A cloud infrastructure provider had 14 business units operating separate data warehouses with no way to share reports across units. Their data infrastructure cost $4.7 million annually. We designed and implemented a federated data mesh that cut costs by consolidating infrastructure but kept each unit’s control intact. This approach enabled cross-unit analytics, which the company couldn’t do before.
Challenge
Over eight years, 14 business units built separate data warehouses with no coordination. This created silos, no shared metrics, no cross-unit reporting, and no way to analyze data across units. Maintaining all 14 warehouses cost $4.7 million annually. The CTO ordered a consolidation, but past efforts stalled because business units resisted change.
Approach
We avoided a centralized warehouse to tackle resistance from business units. Instead, each BU kept control of its data and shared it through a central catalog with standard interfaces. We built the data mesh on Databricks and migrated the BUs in groups of three over 30 weeks.
Outcome
By week 30, all 14 business units were fully integrated into the data mesh. This cut infrastructure costs from $4.7 million to $1.1 million annually. We built cross-unit analytics dashboards that tracked revenue, customer overlap, and operational efficiency for the first time. Switching to a federated ownership model resolved the resistance from business units.
We ended the back-and-forth by handing each team their own data to own.
At first, we tried to pile all the data into one place. But the teams weren’t having it, they didn’t want to lose control. So, we flipped the script. We built a federated mesh setup where each team kept their own data but could easily share it with others. Once they saw they weren’t giving anything up and still got the benefits, they jumped in pretty fast.
How We Tracked Cohorts Together with Business Unit Leaders
Before we kicked off the migration, we grabbed a lead from each business unit. The first three teams dove into the new mesh quickly, which made it a breeze to get the next groups on board. By the time we reached the fourth batch, they were pushing us to move faster.
How We Pulled Reporting Together Across Teams
We put together a dashboard to see how much customer overlap existed between the cloud compute and storage teams. This was something they’d been puzzling over for eight years. Once we laid out the data clearly, even the biggest skeptics had to admit it made sense.
Results
- $4.7M to $1.1M Annual infrastructure cost
- 14 Business units on unified mesh
- 30 wks Full deployment timeline
- 0 Business unit escalations
We tried to consolidate these warehouses twice before, but it didn’t work because the business units wouldn’t cooperate. With the federated mesh model, that changed. Now every BU is on board, and we’re able to do analytics we never could before.