How JetBlue’s combined use of Snowflake and Fivetran is a model for the modern data stack

Commercial airline company, JetBlue, uses the integrated Snowflake data stack to enable insights into its customer services and operational activities.

Ashley Van Name, general manager of data engineering at JetBlue, recently explained how important it is for the airline to get a firm grip on the vast amounts of data it holds. His team turns information into insight by using a combination of Snowflake’s Data Cloud and Fivetran’s data integration service.

This combination represents the modern data stack. Data management is a complex challenge, and information comes from many directions and from so many sources. Thus, any attempt to turn both structured and unstructured data into useful insight requires a broad collection of techniques and technologies.

For the past several years, Van Name’s work has centered on a massive data integration effort. By leveraging an integrated data stack that captures a combination of systems and services, JetBlue’s decision makers benefit from powerful insights that create a competitive advantage.

“We believe that data should be viewed as a product,” Van Name said. “If you lead a product team, and you build a software tool that an end user uses, you have to make sure you meet their needs and build something that can make life easier.”

Generating valuable insights

JetBlue’s three-year journey to a modern data stack included painstaking integration work. Snowflake sits at the center of the stack and stores enterprise information like it does in a data warehouse. However, this cloud-based technology also integrates with a range of other services to generate reports that strengthen decision-making processes.

JetBlue uses a variety of software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications, with data streaming into the data warehouse from ServiceNow, Qualtrics, JIRA and Salesforce. The company also uses third-party SQL servers and Oracle databases.

Van Name says the key to creating a view of this information is to ensure that the raw data is entering the Snowflake Data Cloud. That’s where Fivetran plays a key facilitating role, helping data engineers to ensure JetBlue’s data is centralized rather than siloed.

Fivetran provides a pipeline-as-a-service, which aggregates data from multiple sources for analysis. The service provides more than 200 source connectors that directly replicate information sources in the Snowflake Data Cloud.

From this consolidated location, JetBlue’s data engineers went to work. Van Name explained that the combination of Fivetran and Snowflake ensures that employees are focused on building insight from information rather than technology curiosity.

“We believe that data engineers should spend time making their data useful instead of just moving it,” he said. “Fivetran creates this world where the days of sitting and toiling away building a custom data pipeline are gone. Instead, you can reap the benefits of that pipeline output with a few button clicks.”

Building a modern data stack

JetBlue’s tactical use of Fivetran describes a new phase in the data stack. While Snowflake aims to provide a one-stop shop for executives who want to manage the large volumes of information their businesses collect, the enterprise software giant also recognizes that it can’t achieve this goal alone.

Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman explained in a talk earlier this summer how his company has goals that go beyond running databases in the cloud. Either by developing its own tools or — more importantly — by working with trusted partners like Fivetran — Snowflake wants to create an integrated data stack.

“From a business model perspective, it doesn’t really matter to us whether we own the tool or someone else does,” Slootman said. “We have a different approach than public cloud providers who want to check every box and be able to tell customers, ‘here’s the whole kit and caboodle.’ We are a best-of-breed company.”

Take security, which is one of the main areas Snowflake invests in. Here, the goal — by working with partners like Hunters, Panther Labs, and Securonix — is to ensure that customers can choose the best applications that meet their business requirements and run securely on the platform of Snowflake.

In other words, Snowflake’s vision of a modern, integrated data stack is one that uses tools to help executives at companies like JetBlue make the most of their information, regardless of who created the tool.

As Snowflake cofounder Benoît Dageville told VentureBeat, his company believes the key to delivering a consolidated data stack over the long term will be allowing external developers to build and run their own applications on the Snowflake platform.

“Most will be snowflakes no built by our employees – that’s the vision,” said Dageville. “We’re all about removing friction and democratizing things so that everyone can be an application developer.”

Reaping the rewards

Back at JetBlue, Van Name says the ability to work with a specialized pipeline provider to help quickly push data to Snowflake is already paying dividends.

He noted that it is common for data engineers at other companies to spend about 40% of their time building and testing the ingestion part of the data pipeline. Since implementing Fivetran, Van Name estimates that only 10% of a JetBlue data engineer’s time is spent testing, validating and ensuring that data is pushed to the warehouse.

That shift in effort means that engineers can now spend 90% of their time focusing on how data is used in useful products.

“You get the most bang for your buck from your data engineers because you can dedicate them to harder, more complex data problems,” he says.

One area where JetBlue uses data to create a competitive advantage is in customer experiences. Van Name points to an analysis of a post-flight email survey sent by its partner, Qualtrics. Once customers enter their survey answers, the responses are logged back to Qualtrics before Fivetran’s pipeline pushes the data to Snowflake.

“This process allows us to copy responses very easily and quickly from our customers directly to our Snowflake Data Cloud in their raw form, so that analysts can access the information and gain insights from it ,” said Van Name, who also noted data has sponsored improvements in areas such as in-flight entertainment experiences and digital interactions.

JetBlue also uses data to boost sustainability operations. The airline operates a computerized maintenance management system through an on-premises Oracle database. It uses Fivetran’s HVR technology to replicate a database of mission-critical operations in real time. Employees can use insights from this data to make timely interventions.

“That approach reduces the amount of time it takes analysts to develop reports because they have one place to go and pull the information they need,” Van Name said. “It also empowers more consistent reporting; you’re getting closer and closer to the source of truth for a specific set of information your company cares about.”

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