Allbirds Reduces Snowflake Spend by 19% with No Dip in Performance
Challenges
- Despite generating significant value, Snowflake was the most expensive of their data tech stack
- High Snowflake credit rollover indicated a higher spend than their usage levels justified
- Allbirds required ongoing manual action to monitor Snowflake usage & determine ideal spend levels
Results with Keebo
Allbirds leverages Snowflake to store and utilize data from diverse sources, including their online Shopify ecommerce store, marketing data, and supply chain data. Data operations are managed by a relatively small team. To better allocate resources, Allbirds deployed Keebo’s AI-powered warehouse optimization solution, reducing spend by 19% and enabling a rightsizing provisioning of their Capacity credits to better match Snowflake usage patterns.
The biggest thing was we didn’t see an impact on warehouse performance. That was the big thing for me: do no harm.
Jonathan Kula,
Allbirds Sr. Director of Engineering
Identifying optimal resource allocation
Snowflake is the most expensive platform within Allbirds’ data tech stack. At the same time, the Allbirds team found it difficult to estimate actual usage, resulting in significant credit rollover each year.
As a small company, any opportunity to give money back to the business to be used for other purposes was always welcome. However, lack of insight into ongoing Snowflake usage made it challenging to figure out ideal credit spend provisioning levels.
Tracking Snowflake usage to rightsize contracts
Snowflake’s built-in usage monitoring tools require significant and consistent manual effort to operate. For small data teams like Allbirds, this requirement is not feasible. By deploying Keebo’s AI-powered tool to monitor usage and optimize warehouses in real time, Allbirds not only reduced spend by 19%, but gained a more accurate and up-to-date picture of their Snowflake usage, enabling them to rightsize their provisioned Capacity credits.
Cost savings with no performance degradation
Allbirds adopted Keebo specifically because the AI-powered tool offered the best of both worlds: cost savings with no detrimental impact on performance. According to Jonathan Kula, Allbirds Sr. Director of Engineering, “The biggest thing was we didn’t see an impact on warehouse performance. That was the big thing for me: do no harm.”
For anyone who’s on the fence about Keebo, I would say: It’s not a ton of overhead, and it’s an easy way to save money.
Jonathan Kula,
Allbirds Sr. Director of Engineering
