Project Name
Informatica PowerCenter Replaced With Open Source Stack - 200-Hypermarket Chain Now Gets Data in Under 60 Seconds
A leading retail company operating over 200 hypermarkets across the Middle East and Asia, managing 1.3 million daily transactions as a top player in West Asia, had its core data operations constrained by legacy Informatica PowerCenter infrastructure. Software licence renewals cost between $150K and $400K annually. A monolithic ETL architecture caused 4- to 6-week delays in implementing and deploying new POS integrations. Batch-only processing created 12 to 24-hour data latency, preventing real-time competitive market adjustments and timely inventory updates. Applying its AI-First approach, Ksolves engineered a seamless migration to a fully open-source framework, modernising the core data pipelines, eliminating all proprietary software dependencies, and unlocking near-real-time data processing capabilities across the entire hypermarket network.
- High Licensing Costs - $380K Annual Spend: $380,000 annual spend on rigid, low-margin legacy software and restrictive proprietary connectors. Software licence renewals ranged between $150K and $400K per year with no flexibility in pricing or scope.
- Stalled Inventory Logic - 4 to 6-Week POS Integration Delays: 4 to 6-week delays to implement and deploy new POS integrations due to the monolithic ETL architecture. New store integrations and inventory logic changes were structurally slow regardless of business urgency.
- Batch-Only Processing - 12 to 24-Hour Data Latency: Batch-only processing created 12 to 24-hour data latency, preventing real-time competitive market adjustments and timely inventory updates across 200+ hypermarket locations.
- High Costs and Severe Processing Lag: Informatica struggled with 1.3 million daily transactions, causing massive processing delays. Software licence renewals cost between $150K and $400K every year with no cost reduction path on the legacy platform.
- Poor Data Quality From Offline Store Uploads: Broken files from offline store uploads regularly corrupted reporting data. Fixing these issues required slow, expensive manual work with no automated validation or routing mechanism.
- Hidden Data Paths and Compliance Blind Spots: Moving away from a single vendor tool made tracking compliance and visualising end-to-end data pipelines a major blind spot. No live lineage map existed across the full data flow.
Ksolves designed and delivered a fully open source data lakehouse replacing the Informatica PowerCenter estate with a Medallion architecture (Bronze / Silver / Gold layers) built on Kestra, Apache NiFi, Apache Spark, MinIO, Apache Iceberg, Trino, Apache Atlas, Apache Ranger, and Apache Superset. The governing principle: complete platform freedom - zero downstream dependency on proprietary tools, storage structures, or licensing at any layer of the stack.
- Open Lakehouse With Medallion Architecture (Kestra + Spark + MinIO): Built a cost-efficient storage pipeline using the Medallion pattern (Bronze raw layer, Silver cleaned layer, Gold aggregated layer) with zero licence fees. Kestra orchestrates the full pipeline. Apache Spark handles high-volume processing, eliminating session and execution bottlenecks for 1.3M daily transactions.
- Smart Filtering With Apache NiFi + Dead Letter Queue: NiFi automatically validates inputs on ingestion, saving clean files and routing bad data to a Dead Letter Queue (DLQ) table to keep storage pristine. Broken files from offline store uploads no longer corrupt reporting data - every file is validated before it reaches the Silver layer.
- ACID Safety and Time Travel With Iceberg + Trino: Apache Iceberg prevents file corruption while Trino runs fast analytical queries and enables simple SQL Time Travel to see past data states instantly. ACID transactions ensure data integrity across the 1.3M daily transaction volume.
- Live Lineage Mesh With Atlas + Ranger: Apache Atlas automatically draws a live, visual map of the entire data flow for end-to-end pipeline lineage and compliance visibility. Apache Ranger secures rows and columns with fine-grained access controls replacing proprietary governance tooling.
- Near Real-Time Dashboards With Apache Superset: Apache Superset replaces proprietary reporting tools with a 10-second dashboard refresh rate, delivering near real-time operational visibility across all 200+ hypermarket locations and reducing time-to-insight from 12 to 24 hours to under 60 seconds.
Technology Stack
| Category | Technology |
|---|---|
| Orchestration | Kestra |
| Data Integration | Apache NiFi + DLQ |
| Storage | Apache Iceberg + MinIO |
| Query Engine | Apache Trino |
| Governance | Apache Atlas + Apache Ranger |
| Visualization | Apache Superset |
- $380K Annual Licensing Eliminated: 100% open source stack with zero ongoing licence fees. Annual software spend reduced to compute costs only.
- Time-to-Insight Cut From 24 Hours to Under 60 Seconds: Superset dashboards refresh every 10 seconds. Inventory and pricing decisions available in real time.
- 1.3M Daily Transactions Processed Without Delays: Spark eliminates session and execution bottlenecks across the full hypermarket network.
- Data Quality Problems Eliminated: NiFi automated validation and DLQ routing removes corrupt files before they reach reporting. Manual remediation work gone.
- Live End-to-End Lineage and Compliance: Atlas continuously maintains a live pipeline map. Compliance blind spot closed entirely.
- POS Integration Deployment Accelerated: Modular open source architecture cuts new integration deployment from 4 to 6 weeks to days.
“We were paying over $380,000 a year for an ETL platform that could not handle our transaction volumes and left our teams waiting overnight for data. Ksolves moved us to a fully open source stack that processes 1.3 million transactions daily, refreshes dashboards every 10 seconds, and costs nothing in licensing. The lineage layer finally gives us the compliance visibility we never had.”
-Head of Data Engineering / CTO.
A 200+ hypermarket chain paying $380K annually for Informatica, suffering 24-hour data latency and broken data quality, was transformed through Ksolves Big Data services. A fully open source Medallion lakehouse now processes 1.3M daily transactions with near real-time visibility. Licensing gone. Time-to-insight under 60 seconds. Data quality automated. Lineage live. Dashboards refreshing every 10 seconds. Zero proprietary dependency at any layer.
Still paying six-figure Informatica fees while your teams wait overnight for data?
