June 2020 Summaries

Fivetran, an automated data integration company, has achieved "Unicorn" status with a $100 million Series C financing led by General Catalyst and Andreessen Horowitz. The funding will be used to accelerate global expansion and drive adoption in the enterprise market. Despite recent economic uncertainty, Fivetran has continued to grow rapidly as customers see the opportunity to reduce their total cost of ownership by adopting its product instead of highly customized, in-house ETL pipelines that require constant maintenance. The company's core architecture is designed from the ground up to automatically normalize complex data sources, recover from failures without human intervention, and leverage the capabilities of analytical databases such as Snowflake, Redshift, BigQuery, and Databricks. Fivetran aims to make access to data as simple and reliable as electricity.

"Powered by Fivetran" is a framework that enables developers to build data pipelines into their applications within the Fivetran platform, allowing them to access hundreds of customer accounts across various data sources without any engineering overhead. This tool helps businesses make sense of large amounts of data coming in from different applications and can be used by marketing agencies, BI or data providers, and companies building data-rich intelligence platforms. By using PBF, businesses can focus on their core offerings rather than building and maintaining integration pipelines.

Fivetran introduces "Powered by Fivetran," an offering that simplifies the process of building analytics products on top of customer's data. The new feature includes Connect Cards, which are embeddable setup forms for securely passing and authenticating credentials directly to Fivetran via a secure HTTPS connection. Additionally, Powered by Fivetran offers extended API capabilities for developers, such as the Destination Management API, Group Management API, Connector Management API, and Database Schema Config. These enhancements aim to make data integration automated and reliable while enabling companies to create amazing new data experiences for their customers.

Fivetran, an automated data integration provider, has been named the FY2020 Technology Partner of the Year – Top Performer by Snowflake, a cloud data platform. The award was presented at Snowflake's virtual Partner Summit and recognizes Fivetran for its achievements in helping joint customers automate data integration with zero-maintenance data pipelines. Fivetran and Snowflake have hundreds of joint customers, including Square, Outsystems, Ignition Group, DiscoverOrg, Strava, Oldcastle, DocuSign, among others.

Fivetran has been awarded Snowflake's FY2020 Technology Partner of the Year – Top Performer award at its virtual Partner Summit. This marks the third consecutive year that Fivetran has been recognized as a top Snowflake partner, having previously received global and EMEA awards. The partnership between Fivetran and Snowflake allows customers to quickly replicate data into ready-to-query schemas designed specifically for Snowflake. In addition to the Top Tech Partner award, Snowflake designated Fivetran with Elite Partner Status – its highest partnership level – as part of its newly created Snowflake Partnership Program.

Fivetran has transitioned from an annual per-connector subscription model to a consumption-based pricing model, offering more flexibility and agility for businesses. The new model charges based on source-agnostic monthly active rows, allowing customers to change or add data sources without renegotiating their contract. This approach benefits companies by reducing paperwork, enabling quicker software updates, and accommodating changes in analytical needs. Fivetran's growing portfolio of over 180 connectors supports this new pricing model.

Modern cloud-based applications frequently undergo schema changes due to new features and comprehensive data models introduced by SaaS providers. Traditional ETL data pipelines can be disrupted by these updates, requiring complete rebuilding of the pipeline. To overcome this challenge, automated ELT processes can be implemented, with Fivetran offering a solution that automatically propagates schema changes from source to data warehouse without causing downtime.

A recent survey by Dimensional Research, sponsored by Fivetran, reveals that 98% of companies use business intelligence (BI), and 71% plan to hire more data analysts in the next year. The study also found that a majority of data analysts have ideas for increasing company profit but lack time to implement them. To learn more about the survey findings, download the infographic or report, or watch the YouTube reveal.

The Fivetran dbt package for Marketo provides aggregated tables that enrich Marketo objects with email metrics, such as opens, clicks, and unsubscribes. It also tracks slowly changing dimensions for leads to create a historical record of daily changes for better lead tracking over time. This allows users to easily optimize future Marketo programs and campaigns for better lead generation. The package helps navigate the complexities of Marketo's API by determining which API to use and when, as well as automatically pulling updates in a self-configured schedule. To get started with dbt and Marketo, simply obtain the dbt Package for Marketo.

Analytics projects often fail due to issues with people and processes rather than technology. A proper organization of an analytics team can mitigate this challenge. The hub-and-spoke model consists of a core team responsible for data infrastructure, data governance, and database development, while functionally aligned analytic teams provide responsiveness to the business. This structure allows for professional development up, across, and out, as well as objective strategic leadership and decision making. By implementing the right team structure, companies can realize full ROI from their analytics capabilities.

Fivetran introduces a new connector for Facebook Pages, allowing businesses to better understand customer engagement through organic interactions with their Facebook content. With the increasing importance of staying on top of digital channels, this tool helps track user engagement and determine what content has the most impact. By integrating data from various sources such as paid Facebook ads, Google Ads, or Pinterest Ads, companies can gain a full view of their content's performance across all digital marketing channels.

The article discusses a step-by-step approach to migrate an on-premise enterprise data warehouse (EDW) to a cloud-based one. It highlights the benefits of using cloud data warehouses, such as reduced upfront costs, lower ongoing expenses, improved performance, increased flexibility, and easier scalability. The article also outlines some challenges that organizations may face during this migration process, including replanning their data model, handling stored procedures, and connecting custom data applications. It suggests a gradual approach to the cloud migration strategy, starting with copying the existing data warehouse in the cloud, setting up ongoing replication, migrating analytics infrastructure and data applications, and finally recreating transformations in the new environment. The article emphasizes the importance of using tools like Fivetran for synchronizing data between old and new data warehouses during this transition phase.