Global Marketing Agency: Hadoop Managed Services and Google Cloud Platform Expert Support

Our Customer is one of the largest digital marketing agencies in the world. With over 15,000 employees and operations in over seventy markets, they deliver custom marketing solutions to clients including globally-recognized financial services, luxury, telecommunications, oil and consumer packaged goods brands, as well as multi-billion-dollar government agencies.

The Customer had embarked on a digital transformation initiative that included migrating their databases and applications to Google Cloud Platform (GCP). With a technology stack that includes PostgreSQL, Greenplum and Hortonworks built on Apache Hadoop, they needed an experienced managed services provider for database operational and maintenance tasks, including expert set-up and optimization of their new GCP environment. Project scope comprised:

Database and Operational Support: Delivery of database administration and maintenance, including seamless, uninterrupted support of Hadoop clusters.

Software Patching and Upgrading: Performance of periodic software updates and patches to ensure a secure database environment.

Cloud Environment Support: Delivering ongoing expert services, including a range of tasks associated with Google Cloud technology and infrastructure management.

mLogica deployed a team of specialized database administrators and technology consultants, leveraging our GenAI-powered TRAK*M Managed Services Platform database management and monitoring suite. The team developed a project plan that was divided into two major phases: (1) Analysis and (2) Implementation.

The mLogica team needed to gain visibility into the Customer’s entire environment, including all details of their applications, databases, cloud infrastructure and other supporting components. Through a number of workshops with key stakeholders, our team gathered detailed information from the Customer’s subject matter experts, line of business managers and project managers.

This allowed our team to produce a comprehensive inventory of the existing system, including its Postgres SQL, Greenplum and Apache Hadoop components. They then analyzed the existing technology stack alongside the Google Cloud architecture to determine the scope of tasks required to bridge the existing information gaps.

In the implementation phase, the mLogica team executed a number of database management and administrative tasks to enhance operational efficiencies and resolve critical issues the Customer faced with their Hadoop technologies on Google Cloud Platform. These tasks included:

Round-the-Clock Help Desk: Our team proactively supported the organization’s existing Hadoop platform and utilized mLogica’s GenAI-powered TRAK*M solution to address and resolve user issues. TRAK*M, with support from our database administrator and consultant teams, sharply reduced operational and maintenance issues, resulting in diminished downtime and increased efficiencies.

Continuous Monitoring and Alerting: Our team applied a mix of Customer-approved scripts and tools to provide uninterrupted database management and monitoring of the company’s Hadoop environment. This was essential to keep tabs on all Hadoop clusters, identify any issues early and quickly remediate them.

Implementing Clear Defect Reporting and Remediation Procedures: An effective issue resolution methodology was critical to the success of this initiative. Our team implemented a clear, standardized process for users to report defects, which were then entered into a tracking system, triaged according to criticality and resolved. In addition, we developed an escalation process, in collaboration with the Customer’s team, to identify the root cause of issues to ensure they didn’t recur.

Performance Tuning: Latency is a critical issue for companies looking to speed up their database environment. By conducting quarterly health checks and tuning, our team removed bottlenecks and optimized the Customer’s Hadoop technologies, in production database instances, to accelerate performance.

Creation of a Technical Operations Manual: At the onset of the project, our team developed a technical operations manual that detailed all technologies operating within the Customer environment, including the current tech stack, periodic and ad-hoc tasks, standard operating procedures and response and recovery protocols. This manual includes:

• Roles and responsibilities of all users accessing the environment
• Production, development/test and high availability environments
• Alerts and reports
• Escalation processes

This manual now serves as the guiding technical operational document for the Customer to configure and optimize their Hadoop technologies.

Weekly Status Reports: Throughout the implementation phase, the mLogica team delivered weekly updates to ensure the Customer was fully informed about the initiative’s progress, including details of tasks performed, any outstanding issues and their remediation status. This made it easier for the Customer to understand the overall health of their Hadoop environment at all points.

Expert Google Cloud Platform Services: mLogica’s team helped the Customer set up and manage their cloud-native services and tools, including:

Our team worked with the Customer’s development team to deliver their Flyway and Helm Chart releases and rectify any issues connected to pipeline failure. We also activated Datadog and Catchpoint alerts to monitor their Google Cloud environment.

In addition, our team collaborated with the Customer’s IAM and network team to configure infrastructure for performance and security. We helped streamline CI/CD pipelines, which involved GitLab Runner, Dataflow and Flyway components. This optimization of all GCP components ensured a reduction in network latency and tightened data security.

The mLogica team also provides ongoing support services for the Customer’s Google Cloud technologies, including infrastructure management, performance and operational optimization, resource allocation and maintenance tasks.

By engaging mLogica’s TRAK*M Managed Services Platform and expert teams the Customer has gained significant ongoing benefits, including:

Automated Operations: By automating daily database activities and procedures, TRAK*M reduced the painstaking, repetitive tasks required to keep the Hadoop platform running optimally. This automation of database management and monitoring tasks reduced staff hours required for maintenance, resulting in increased productivity and consistency in performance.

Performance Optimization: Through streamlining index selection, improving query execution and optimizing memory allocation, TRAK*M’s GenAI-powered automation boosted the performance levels of the organization’s Hadoop technologies to consistently meet required performance thresholds.

Proactive Issue Resolution with GenAI: Utilizing our TRAK*M Managed Services Platform’s GenAI capabilities, our team was able to detect issues before they could impact the Customer’s environment, resulting in fewer performance-related issues and higher availability of applications and databases.

In addition, mLogica’s Google Cloud Platform technology consultants ensured configuration of all cloud components, including Kubernetes Engine, Compute Engine, Cloud SQL, BigQuery, Google Cloud Storage and Composer, was optimized to reduce network latency and tighten data security.

This deployment of TRAK*M managed services continues to deliver key benefits to the Customer through automation, effective issue tracking and performance optimization—resulting in cost efficiencies, accelerated operations, increased data security and far fewer defects. The development of a comprehensive technical operations manual further supported operational efficiency and maintenance of the Customer’s Hadoop environment.

The successful integration of Google Cloud technologies allows the company to eliminate recurring issues and focus on the innovation of their solutions. Overall, the project has become a major success for the Customer and enables them to deliver enhanced services to their clients while outperforming their competitors.