BERLIN — In 2022, Zalando faced a growing challenge in managing its expanding data ecosystem. The European fashion retailer needed a way to integrate disparate data sources across its operations. This included customer interactions, supply chain records, and sales figures from multiple markets. The company decided to build a unified data foundation on Databricks to streamline these processes.
The project began with a clear goal: create a single source of truth for all business data. Zalando’s engineering teams worked with Databricks to migrate existing data lakes and warehouses into a centralized platform. The migration covered over 10 petabytes of data, including structured and unstructured formats. By consolidating these sources, Zalando aimed to reduce duplication and improve data consistency.
A key part of the transition involved standardizing data formats. Zalando implemented Delta Lake as the storage layer to ensure reliability and performance. The company also adopted Databricks SQL Analytics for real-time querying and reporting. This allowed teams to access up-to-date insights without waiting for batch processing delays.
The unified platform enabled faster development of AI models. Data scientists could now access clean, standardized datasets directly. This reduced the time spent on data preparation from weeks to days. Zalando also integrated MLflow for model tracking and versioning, ensuring reproducibility in its AI initiatives.
The results showed measurable improvements. Query performance improved by 40% in the first six months. Data teams reported a 30% reduction in time spent on data cleaning tasks. The unified foundation also supported Zalando’s expansion into new markets, providing scalable infrastructure for future growth.
Source: databricks.com