Zetta helped PwC replace their cloud platform with an optimised solution, delivering results in under a year.
Cloud platform optimisation is a priority for any organisation offering data-driven services at scale. When a platform becomes a burden rather than an asset, the impact is felt across every client it serves.
PwC, one of the world's leading professional services firms, faced exactly this challenge. A platform central to one of their client-facing services was falling short of the cloud performance optimisation standards their clients expected. PwC needed a faster and more reliable solution.
About PwC
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) is a global network of professional services firms and a member of the Big Four - the world's most influential accounting and advisory organisations. PwC offers a broad range of services across audit and assurance, tax advisory, management consulting and legal services.
With a significant presence in corporate governance, regulatory transparency, and sustainable development, PwC serves some of the world's largest organisations across every major industry.
The challenge
The existing platform was struggling to process the volumes of client data required to deliver meaningful results - specifically, analysing the health and performance of client cloud environments. Achieving the level of cloud performance optimisation PwC required meant the platform needed to be rebuilt from the ground up.
The task required understanding a system with no documentation or handover, which our team approached through reverse engineering. Within a few months, our team had a clear picture of what we were working with. Data restrictions and jurisdictional requirements across multiple regions added further constraints, each of which our experts worked through systematically before the platform could go live.
Why Zetta
PwC had worked with Zetta before and knew what to expect - technically strong teams that work well with their own.
"The most interesting aspect of this project was reverse engineering the old platform from scratch. It's a process that requires a lot of patience and methodical thinking -you're essentially rebuilding someone else's logic before you can improve on it. Once we had that understanding, the path forward was clear," says Georgi Vasilev, Senior Software Developer at Zetta.
The approach
To handle the scale and complexity of the data involved, Zetta built the new optimised cloud infrastructure around proven large-scale data technologies:
- Apache Spark for processing high volumes of data efficiently
- Apache Cassandra and JanusGraph for robust data storage and management
- Elasticsearch for fast indexing and search capabilities
This stack was chosen specifically to ensure the platform could handle growing data volumes while remaining performant and scalable.
The result
In under a year, Zetta delivered a fully rebuilt platform that replicated the functionality of the original while addressing every one of its shortcomings. The focus throughout was on platform performance, ensuring the solution was not only faster, but built to scale with PwC's needs over time.
A benchmark test run on both platforms was conclusive: the old system completed the same task in three to four days. The new platform completed it in under two hours.
Following the initial delivery, Zetta continued to support PwC with technical maintenance before handing full ownership of the platform back to their team.
What's next
Cloud platform optimisation remains an ongoing priority as data volumes grow and client expectations evolve. Zetta continues to partner with organisations like PwC to build infrastructure that performs today and grows with them over time.