Carsten Bernhard, CTO of eDreams ODIGEO, invited us visit the headquarters of Europe´s biggest traveling platform in Barcelona on Sunday, Nov 3.
Data Mesh: From centralized to decentralized governance
eDreams ODIGEO (eDO), under the leadership of CIOmover Carsten Bernhard, transitioned its data architecture from a centralized data warehouse to a modern data mesh architecture based on BigQuery to support exponential business growth and a customer-centric approach.
The previous centralized data warehouse model faced challenges keeping pace with the rapidly changing business and data landscape, exacerbated by a growing number of teams and the growing complexity of microservices. The centralized data team struggled to manage the increasing volume of changes across the organization. Subsequent attempts to distribute data led to siloed information, hindering cross-domain integration. Additionally, the rise of AI technologies underscored the necessity for a unified data model.
In 2019, eDO chose to implement the emerging data mesh model, which offered a distributed approach, rather than adopting the then-standard centralized model with a data lake. With the data mesh, eDO has introduced centralized data storage and a distributed data architecture and governance, that is allowing the growing team to move fast while keeping aligned.
The team, led by Carsten Bernhard and chief architect Carlos Saona Vàzquez, faced cultural, organizational, and process challenges in addition to technical hurdles during the transition to the data mesh.
Data mesh systems need to handle large volumes of data, efficiently connect and integrate data from various business units, manage different dataset versions, and maintain reliable documentation. Additionally, these systems should minimize maintenance costs, scale effortlessly to accommodate growing teams and departments, and operate without centralized governance bottlenecks, enabling organizational agility even as the number of data consumers and producers increases.
Spoiler: To anticipate: The data mesh architecture at eDO is currently operational and productive, supporting numerous AI use cases for the travel retailer. The team is now focused on further enhancements and innovations.
On November 3, 2024, Carlos and Carsten will share their experiences in establishing the new architecture at eDreams ODIGEO in Barcelona. Attendees of the Gartner IT Symposium in Barcelona are invited to join the discussion at 6 pm at the eDreams ODIGEO headquarters rooftop, Bailen 67, 08009 Barcelona, followed by dinner at 8 pm.
If possible, get a flight on Sunday morning already. Our colleagues from the UK are planning a bicycle tour around Barcelona in the afternoon and we are welcome to join. We care for the bikes. And do not worry: It won´t become too sporty. We only race for red wine.
The meeting point for the bike tour is here: https://goo.gl/maps/cc192diWyLKxANJEA (The shop is called Ocean Bikes – Space to Sail, it is located at the lower level inside the port.)
We’re partners with a sailing company, so you’ll see their logo on the shop:
Your guide will wait for you there 10 minutes before the tour.
This year´s Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo starts on Monday, Nov 4, in Barcelona.
Apply now by sending an email to Claudia Michel (contact@ciomove.com). We are looking forward to seeing you!