Transforming the Legacy ETL Backbone into a Future-Ready Data Foundation for a Leading U.S. Retailer

For this leading U.S. retailer, data sits at the core of daily operations — from merchandising and pricing to supply chain and store performance. Over time, these functions relied on an extensive estate of Ab Initio ETL jobs, making the data platform one of the most critical systems. While it had served well, the technology was aging, difficult to maintain, and not designed for cloud-native scale.

Client Challenges and Requirements

• An expansive and tightly coupled ETL estate — roughly 18,000 Ab Initio jobs supported core retail functions across dozens of subject areas.
• Growing maintenance and agility constraints — the legacy platform required specialized skills and slowed enhancements.
• No tolerance for disruption — modernization had to preserve data availability for merchandising, supply chain, pricing, and store operations.
• Pressure to prepare for the future — leadership needed confidence the new environment would support cloud-native processing.

Bitwise Solution

• Began with the merchandising domain as a focused proof of concept to validate migration patterns before scaling.
• Migrated workloads to Informatica, improving maintainability and scalability while preserving existing data logic and business rules.
• Structured the merchandising migration as a template reusable across 40+ subject areas.
• Implemented a Databricks pilot to demonstrate cloud-native processing for future analytics demands.