Solution
Raiffeisen Bank International consolidated a fragmented analytics environment — on-premises and cloud systems with different SQL dialects, access controls, and operational models across federated banks in Central and Eastern Europe — into the APEX decentralized analytics platform built on Databricks SQL. The rollout was deliberately phased: legacy platforms ran in parallel while users were onboarded gradually and production workloads were protected. Once on Databricks SQL, queries that previously took up to 30 days dropped to ~12 minutes, average workloads run 3–4x faster, and BI is served directly from the Lakehouse without unnecessary data movement. Elastic compute scales on demand for hundreds of concurrent risk, compliance, finance, and retail analysts. Centralized access controls, audit logs, and lineage meet stringent European banking governance requirements, while open formats and APIs avoid future lock-in.
Data flow
RBI consolidated a fragmented analytics environment — on-prem and cloud systems with different SQL dialects across federated banks in Central and Eastern Europe — into the APEX decentralized analytics platform on Databricks SQL. Legacy platforms ran in parallel during onboarding so production workloads were protected. BI workloads are now served directly from the Lakehouse without unnecessary data movement, and an internal cost-monitoring platform on Databricks tracks usage by warehouse, user, and workload. Centralized access controls, audit logs, and lineage support stringent European banking governance requirements.