Transforming Real-Time Data Architecture on AWS: Cider’s Success with Tacnode

Overview

Cider, a global e-commerce brand serving customers in over 100 countries, faced significant challenges as its data volumes grew exponentially. With operations spanning sourcing, logistics, fulfillment, and digital channels, teams struggled to access fast, reliable insights—especially during peak demand periods. Slow queries, fragmented systems, and delayed data hindered real-time monitoring and timely decision-making.

To overcome these obstacles, Cider adopted Tacnode on AWS, enabling a unified, real-time data architecture that delivers low-latency querying, seamless streaming ingestion, and elastic scalability.

Challenges

As Cider expanded internationally, its legacy data infrastructure encountered multiple issues:

• Slow Query Performance: Critical operational queries, particularly in logistics, slowed to minutes, with some taking up to 200 seconds to complete. Routine maintenance tasks like PostgreSQL VACUUM further degraded performance, discouraging historical data analysis.
• Fragmented Data Systems: Multiple databases and query engines—including PostgreSQL, MySQL, and Elasticsearch—created complex synchronization pipelines. This fragmentation led to inconsistent data across services and increased operational overhead.
• Scalability Limits During Peak Traffic: Sudden spikes in traffic during global promotions and seasonal events overwhelmed legacy systems. Slow scaling and performance degradation risked customer experience during critical moments.

The Solution: Unified Real-Time Data Architecture on AWS

Cider implemented Tacnode’s unified data platform to consolidates transactional databases, data warehouses, search engines, and stream processors. This architecture enabled:

• Real-Time Streaming Ingestion: Seamless ingestion of streaming data from diverse sources with sub-second latency.
• Low-Latency Querying: Fast, reliable access to fresh data powered by PostgreSQL-compatible querying, eliminating the need for multiple replicas and synchronization pipelines.
• Elastic Scalability: Independent scaling of compute resources to handle demand spikes instantly without performance loss.
• Simplified Data Operations: Centralized data access reduced maintenance overhead and improved data consistency across teams.

Results

The transition to Tacnode’s platform yielded transformative outcomes:

1. Dramatically Faster Queries: Average query latency dropped from 18 ms to 2 ms. Full-table scans accelerated over 10 times, making both real-time and historical analysis practical.
2. Fresh, Trustworthy Data: Newly ingested data was available with sub-second latency, enabling operational dashboards and analytics to reflect current conditions without delay.
3. Reduced Operational Complexity: Consolidation of multiple databases and pipelines simplified architecture, lowered maintenance efforts, and enhanced data reliability.
4. Stable Performance Under Load: Tacnode’s compute-storage separation allowed rapid scaling during events like Black Friday, maintaining consistent throughput and responsiveness.
5. Improved Analytical Stability: Integration with AWS EMR for reporting and ad-hoc analytics resolved prior memory issues and improved query reliability.

“As Cider scaled globally, we reached a point where operational data was being copied into too many systems just to keep up with queries. Tacnode allowed us to collapse that complexity into a single real-time layer. We’re now querying fresh data directly, at scale, without the operational overhead that used to slow us down.” — Cider Engineering

Conclusion

By adopting Tacnode’s modern real-time data architecture on AWS, Cider transformed its data capabilities—achieving faster insights, fresher data, streamlined operations, and resilient performance at global scale. This unified platform empowers teams to make data-driven decisions confidently and efficiently, supporting Cider’s continued growth in a competitive market.

Tacnode’s Context Lake platform offers enterprises a powerful solution for real-time data streaming, low-latency querying, and analytics on AWS, enabling seamless data ingestion, processing, and analysis with PostgreSQL compatibility and elastic scalability.

For easy deployment and integration, Tacnode is also available on the AWS Marketplace, providing a streamlined way to access and manage the platform within your AWS environment.

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