A MODERN CLOUD BASED BI ARCHITECTURE

Andrew McSwigganHead of BI & AnalyticsCherry Casino

CHERRY

Founded 1963

Acquires the Automaten Group

and becomes Leading player in Online Slot

Machines

2010

Sells Maritime Gaming

2012

Current Online Company Launched

with EuroSlots

November 2012

Sells Automaten Group to Betson

2013

Cherry Appointed International Online

Gaming Operator 2014

THE BI PROJECT - 2014

Establish Steering Group

Complete Initial

Analysis

Define BI Strategy

Create BI Roadmap

Define BI Organisation

Define Data Architecture

Evaluate and Select BI

Tools

Traditional BI Project Not a BIG Data Project !!

Structured Data

Warehouse

Central data modelling

Central data preparation

Predictive analytics

Central data

Self Service Analytics

Self Service Report

building

Self Service report

subscription

KEY OBJECTIVES

TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS

Subscription Service

Light Administration

Low Maintenance

Easy to Install and Use

No Bandwidth Constraints

BI CLOUD RATIONALE

• Scalable storage and computing power

• Limited software administration

• Pay as you go

• Flexibility, Elasticity and Agility

• No real “disaster recovery” concerns

• Simple backup and recovery

• No Hardware investment

• No Network Bandwidth Issues

• Minimum Configuration requirements

• Finding a balance between low maintenance and high functionality

AMAZON WEB SERVICES AND AMAZON REDSHIFT

Amazon AWS came out on top as the market leader in the 2014 Gartner Magic Quadrant, with Microsoft somewhat behind. CenturyLink, IBM SoftLayer, Verizon Terramark and CSC earned their spots as “visionaries” in the report but VMware, Rackspace, and GoGrid, among others, were ranked by Gartner as simply “niche players.

Gartner is the world's leading information technology research and advisory company

BIG 4 BI TECHNOLOGY VENDORS

TABLEAU AND ALTERYX

TOOLS EVALUATION

• Start Point - Gartner Magic Quadrant

• SAP Stack (Anchor point for the Analysis).

• AMAZON REDSHIFT – TABLEAU – ALTERYX

• Microsoft Stack and Azure Cloud

BI REPORTING AND VISUALISATION TOOLS

0%20%40%60%80%

100%Runs as…

UsabilityReport…

Security

Deploymen…

Connectivity

Semantic…Online…

Resource…Administra…

Visualisation

Query…

Scheduling

Drill Through

Context…Dashboard…

Microsoft %

0%20%40%60%80%

100%Runs as…

Usability

Report…

Security

Deploymen…

Connectivity

Semantic…

Online…Resource…

Administrat…

Visualisation

Query…

Scheduling

Drill Through

Context…

Dashboard…

SAP%

0%20%

40%60%

80%100%

Runs as…Usability

Report…

Security

Deployment…

Connectivity

Semantic…

Online…Resource…

Administrati…

Visualisation

Query…

Scheduling

Drill Through

Context…

Dashboard…

Tableau%

CLOUD BI CONFIGURATION

• When evaluating a move to a Cloud based BI solution there are a number of things to consider

• THE CLOUD DEPLOYMENT MODEL

• CONNECTING TO AND PROCESSING DATA

• COST OF OWNERSHIP

• SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENT

• SECURITY AND RISK EVALUATION

SELECTED TECHNOLOGY STACK

RedShift

Alteryx

Tableau

CHERRY BI CLOUD

CONNECTING TO AND PROCESSING DATA

• Cherry selected Alteryx as the data preparation tool because:

• Alteryx can be installed on a Server in the AWS cloud

• Alteryx connects to Amazon Redshift

• Alteryx connects to multiple Web based data Sources and API’s

• Alteryx includes predictive analytical and statistical functions that do not require programming

• Alteryx can utilise the fast loading capabilities of Amazon Redshift

• Alteryx can connect to both structured and un structured data sources

COST OF OWNERSHIP

Amazon Redshift Node Usage

$0.300 per Redshift Dense Compute Large (DW2.L) Compute Node-hour (or

partial hour)5,920 Hrs $1,776.00

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud running Windows – Alteryx Server

$0.376 per On Demand Windows c3.xlarge Instance Hour 740 Hrs $278.24

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud running Linux/UNIX – Casino Back Office 4 Brands

$0.308 per On Demand Linux m3.xlarge Instance Hour 740 Hrs $227.92

SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENT

• In the case of Cherry the Service Agreement is provided by AWS.

• “AWS will use commercially reasonable efforts to make Amazon EC2 and Amazon EBS each available with a Monthly Uptime Percentage (defined below) of at least 99.95%, in each case during any monthly billing cycle (the “Service Commitment”). In the event Amazon EC2 or Amazon EBS does not meet the Service Commitment, you will be eligible to receive a Service Credit as described below.”

• “Region Unavailable” and “Region Unavailability” mean that more than one Availability Zone in which you are running an instance, within the same Region, is “Unavailable” to you.

• “Unavailable” and “Unavailability” mean:

• For Amazon EC2, when all of your running instances have no external connectivity.

• For Amazon EBS, when all of your attached volumes perform zero read write IO, with pending IO in the queue.

• Source: http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/sla/

SECURITY AND RISK EVALUATION

• Physical Security

• “With the AWS cloud, not only are infrastructure headaches removed, but so are many of the security issues that come with them. AWS’s world-class, highly secure data centers utilize state-of-the art electronic surveillance and multi-factor access control systems. Data centers are staffed 24x7 by trained security guards, and access is authorized strictly on a least privileged basis.

• Operational Security

• “Environmental systems are designed to minimize the impact of disruptions to operations. And multiple geographic regions and Availability Zones allow you to remain resilient in the face of most failure modes, including natural disasters or system failures”

• Platform, Application and Data Security

• “Not only are your applications and data protected by highly secure facilities and infrastructure, but they’re also protected by extensive network and security monitoring systems. These systems provide basic but important security measures such as distributed denial of service (DDoS) protection and password brute-force detection on AWS Accounts.”

• Source: http://aws.amazon.com/security/