Absa Group Limited (ABGL), originally Amalgamated Banks of South Africa, is a South African-based financial services group offering personal and business banking, credit cards, corporate and investment banking, wealth, and investment management, as well as bank assurance. It is one of the three largest banks in South Africa and operates in 15 countries across the African continent, as well as offices in the United Kingdom and the United States.
Building a Logical Data Warehouse
Recently, ABSA realized that its data infrastructure, comprised of two data warehouses and a complex series of extract, transform, and load (ETL) processes, could be improved in terms of the total cost of operation as well as the time required to deliver data to business analysts. So, ABSA made a strategic decision to modernize its data ecosystem, which included the embrace of a big data strategy. However, during the modernization, ABSA found it challenging to ensure the continuity of business operations. ABSA needed a data abstraction layer between the legacy systems and the new strategic platform, so the company could continue building out the new platforms without disrupting business processes.
The Denodo Platform, with its data virtualization capabilities for establishing a logical data warehouse, fulfilled that need. With the Denodo Platform in place, ABSA no longer had to rely on expensive, time-consuming ETL processes for replicating and moving the data. ABSA now does most of its data integration and transformation on the Denodo Platform, which also provides self-service analytics to business users.
At a glance