Background
The Next Generation Reporting & Data (NGRD) project is a major initiative to build and establish an enterprise-wide reporting and data platform for Disney Entertainment.
The existing reporting portals and tools were disparate; on antiquated technology stacks; not built in a scalable manner; required a large overhead to support and maintain.
Product Road Map
We’ll approach this project in phases ultimately migrating all existing reporting systems onto the Amazon Web Services infrastructure creating one unified reporting platform, portal, and self-servicing data uploader for our Disney business units.
Phase I – Proof of Concept. Prove that AWS infrastructure will meet our needs as well as utilize AWS elasticity. AWS elasticity is the ability to acquire infrastructure resources as we need them and release resources when we no longer need them. Our processing power and needs fluctuate throughout the year. Reporting systems are busier during the end of a fiscal period. In between these periods, we don’t need the raw computing power required for a quarter close. We only pay for the computing power when we need it (pay as you go).
Phase II – Rationalize all current reports. All reports needed to be analyzed and validated. We reduced the current number of reports down from 1403 to 798. There were many reports that were no longer utilized or the business needs had changed and a report was no longer relevant.
Phase III – report migration. The development of an API and portal was instrumental in consolidating our reports in a single location. The API enables the creation of a data pipeline to any back-end data source, whether on-premise, in the cloud, or in a vendor environment. It also affords us the use of any front-end reporting tool (e.g. MS SSRS, Tableau, Power BI, Snowflake, etc), and business units are no longer limited to specific reporting tools.
NGRD is a hybrid, cloud-based (AWS), and on-premise reporting and data platform that consolidates current reporting portals into a single flexible, extensible portal that enables any back-end data sources to easily connect with front-end reporting tools.