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From Complexity to Clarity: How A Global Biopharmaceutical Leader Modernized Its Data Platform and Governance at scale with Koantek

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About Customer

A values-based, R&D-driven global biopharmaceutical enterprise headquartered in Japan with presence in over 80 countries and a legacy of innovation that focuses on translating science into highly innovative medicines. Powered by strong commitment on patient outcome, digital transformation and data-driven decision-making to accelerate research in global health improvisation and a brighter future for the world.

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The Challenges Customer Faced

As our customer continued to evolve its global data platform, they faced significant governance and scalability challenges. Their existing Hive Metastore setup lacked the flexibility and precision required to support modern compliance, security, and operational demands. Key challenges included:

Enforcing secure-scalable data access and control across business units globally due to complex stakeholder relationships and evolving ownership, making governance and compliance difficult to maintain
High operational cost overhead due to legacy Hive Metastore database
Lack of best practices and code standards for larger scalability and accessibility leading to complexity in decommissioning legacy Hive Metastore while ensuring continuity for mission-critical jobs.
Identifying and upgrading legacy objects and non-compliant configurations.

How Koantek Responded

To overcome these challenges and enable scalable governance as well as prepare for enterprise AI adoption, the organization required a future-ready solution and a modern approach to managing data assets across regions by migrating its workload to Databricks Unity Catalog for all 8 business units across 3 regions.

Koantek’s role with deep technical expertise went far beyond implementation—bringing together engineering precision, project leadership, and cross-functional alignment to deliver a modern data governance architecture, laying the foundation for data compliance, operational efficiency, and future growth.

Key Implementation Highlights:

Regional Metastores (US, Japan, Europe) deployed to comply with data residency policies.
300,000+ metadata objects and 200+ mission-critical jobs migrated to Unity Catalog.
500+ clusters governed under UC with significant efficiency gains.
Streamlined access control deployed to enhance compliance and audit readiness.
Automated migration scripts and dashboard validations supported smooth transition and invoicing.
Robust fallback strategies and meticulous project governance enabled zero issues during the hypercare phase.

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The Outcome

Enhanced Data Governance and Security

100% of mission-critical workloads migrated with no policy violations
Enhanced compliance via object-level Granular access controls across all business units
Business Unity-specific catalogs supports secure, scalable cross-region access and global policy standardization

Operational Efficiency

Hive Metastore decommissioning resulted in a 40% reduction in governance overhead
Job execution success improved by 20% post-migration due to streamlined access
15%–20% reduction in provisioning effort for managed compute clusters

Faster Data Access and Cross Business Unit Collaboration

Cross-unit data sharing increased by 25%, unlocking broader collaboration
Time-to-data for analysts reduced by 30%, enabling quicker insights and decisions

Improved Cost Transparency