How InMobi achieved 20x faster queries and 80% cost savings with ClickHouse

InMobi successfully transitioned its ad reporting system to ClickHouse to improve performance, cost-efficiency, and reliability, addressing the challenges of real-time decision-making for publishers. The migration from a serverless warehouse to ClickHouse reduced query latency from 60 seconds to under 3 seconds and cut monthly expenses by 80%, all while handling over 400,000 daily queries across 10 terabytes of data. The new architecture uses Spark for data ingestion and a parent-child service pattern for efficient resource management, effectively addressing issues such as atomic ingestion, concurrency, and fallback mechanisms. This transformation has not only enhanced publisher reporting but also established a scalable, predictable analytics platform for future use cases. By implementing these changes, InMobi improved its service reliability and gained the ability to forecast costs more accurately, which is crucial given the company's anticipated growth.