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Customer Story

Global Leader in Agri-Research Quadruples its Processing Speed Thanks to Improved Automation

Serverless architecture and cloud-based solutions increase Kynetec’s data processing efficiency by 77%
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Software Development 

Industry
Public and Utilities

Company
PGS Software | Part of Xebia

Kynetec is the global leader in animal health and agricultural market insights. The company has a long history of market research expertise, specializing in animal health, animal nutrition, crop protection, farm machinery and equipment, seed/biotech and fertilizers. Kynetec’s number one priority is to deliver the highest-quality insights and foresights at the right time to enable its clients to confidently make the best decisions for their business.

Kynetec was formed after the management buyout of the Animal & Crop Health division of GfK. The company’s employees are located across 30 major agriculture and animal health countries. Its coverage extends to multiple markets, where Kynetec regularly undertakes research projects in over 80 countries.
Why
Respond to the challenges of integrating big data
What
Free up analysts by developing automation
How
Create efficient serverless storage with AWS, Python and Scala

Big Data

The research business is a data-rich one. Kynetec processes large amounts of data to create industry reports for its clients around the world. Working on such sizable data volumes, to some extent manually, took up a lot of time for Kynetec’s analysts. Implementing an MVP was the company’s first step towards introducing automation. Later, Kynetec decided to expand this solution to free up its data analysts to work on more meaningful tasks. This is where Xebia stepped in to help.

From MVP to Serverless Storage

Kynetec initially used an MVP with a cloud-managed SQL database service as its main data processing platform. With Xebia’s help, the MVP was transitioned to a file-based storage service using serverless features (where feasible) to minimize the resource footprint when not in use. Raw data can now be “cleaned” significantly faster and more efficiently, enabling analysts to spend more time creating value-added insights.

PGS Software | Part of Xebia, plays a pivotal role in us meeting our objectives against automating and enhancing our Data Pipelines. The value-driven approach ensures changes are prioritized and where the effort may be significant, PGS Software delivers bite-sized proof of concepts to ensure commitment to architecture and solutions will meet short, medium, and long-term goals.

Kynetec
Shahbaz Hafeez Senior Director Software Development

AWS: A Smart Solution

Thanks to Xebia’s managed Spark computing clusters, Kynetec’s average raw data processing times were reduced by 77%. A team was assembled consisting of three developers and one project manager/Scrum master. Xebia used AWS Cloud as its base: a serverless solution for handling large amounts of data while allowing for the continuous integration of big data. Various AWS technologies coupled with Python and Scala were used as well as tools such as Jenkins, Bitbucket, JIRA, Confluence, Docker, Terraform and Terragrunt. The efficiency of the new processes meant that data analysts could spend more time doing other work.

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