Subway Uses ActiveBatch to Develop and Manage Its Datacenter Automation

An ActiveBatch Workload Automation Success Story

Subway relies heavily on the operational and sales data it receives from its 43,000 restaurants around the world. The database team, however, was relying on a variety of script-dependent, solution-specific automation tools that lacked essential capabilities:

  • The database team had no way to manage dependencies between servers, forcing the team to rely on “manual handoffs and flag waving”;

  • There was no ability to restart jobs in the middle of a workflow, forcing the database team to restart entire workflows whenever a single job failed;

  • A lack of event automation forced the team to rely on error-prone manual triggers;

  • Because they had to rely on a catalogue of basic, script-driven automation tools, workflows had become overly complex, time-consuming, and difficult to manage.

By The Numbers

>60%

The time spent managing and updating data loads, and managing development environments and scheduling backups, was reduced by more 60%.

75%

Subway estimates that time spent building and updating workflows has been reduced by 75% because of their use of ActiveBatch.

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Subway Implements ActiveBatch

Subway was relying on a disparate collection of SQL servers, a legacy OpenVMS system, a newer .NET/SQL platform, and a Teradata Data Warehouse Appliance. What Subway required was an IT automation solution that could orchestrate and integrate this diverse environment: 

  • The ActiveBatch Integrated Jobs Library provided Subway with hundreds of prebuilt job steps and out-of-the-box integrations, accelerating the development of reliable, cross-platform, end-to-end workflows;
  • The database team used ActiveBatch to segment its complex workflows into practicable chunks, enabling the team to dynamically manage these segments with event triggers;
  • The ActiveBatch Extension for Teradata gave Subway the tools it needed to fully automate and integrate the Teradata processes it relied on.

In Their Own Words

“The [Subway] team would spend approximately 10 hours a week managing and updating the data loads, managing the development environments and scheduling backups. With ActiveBatch that’s been reduced to less than 4 hours a week.”

“Data volumes are only going to increase. We’ll need to be able to meet those demands and ActiveBatch will be the automation solution to automate our datacenter.”

“The ActiveBatch Extension for Teradata really added the automation framework to allow Subway to automate key Teradata processes.”

“The ability to display the entire workflow and all the dependencies and variables that are being passed in a graphical format dramatically simplifies the management and updating of these processes, saving us time.”

How Subway Succeeded with ActiveBatch

The database team dynamically manages workflows and dependencies from a single, central console.

There has been a drastic reduction in the time spent building workflows, updating workflows, and managing dependencies.

The database team can now re-run jobs within workflows, as opposed to restarting the whole workflow because of one failed job, saving time and resources.

The database team is taking full advantage of ActiveBatch’s prebuilt job steps, simplifying the development and management of complex, reliable workflows.


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