As a result of the ongoing digitization, data migration has become essential for all organizations that want to get better results, improve their operations, and protect their data sites. Syed Zia Ashraf, the Principal Solutions Architect, is trusted to manage and implement challenging data migrations using state-of-the-art tools and technologies, most notably Google Cloud’’s Bigquery and Apache Airflow.
For a decade, he has been facilitating organizations in migrating large-scale data solutions as easily as possible; all the encumbrance of performance, security, and compliance risks was taken care of.
Syed has embarked on a new journey by showcasing himself during the migration of a financial services firm’s legacy on-premise systems to GCP. Integrating both transactional and analytical data, the project addressed the needs of the firm for near two-ex reports and better data processing. There was even the development of an automated migration pipeline that sought to maintain data integrity, reduce downtime, and enhance workflow performance using Apache Airflow’s Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs). “As a result of this migration, data processing speeds increased by 40%, which considerably improved the reporting capabilities of the firm,” notes Syed.
Furthermore, the project enhanced information technology security controls and regulatory processes, which was of utmost importance considering that it was a financial project.
In his previous position with Sabre, Syed dealt with large RIS datasets and protection dilemmas by conforming to data management policies such as ITIL and CMMI. While in this role, he and his colleagues combined their efforts to automate the reporting processes for some of the key reports including Budget Briefing Reports, Monthly Variance Reports, and Status of Funds Reports. “By automating these workflows, we were able to cut down the manual work and processing done by more than 30% and able to ensure proper security and governance of the data”, Syed explains. For an institution such the Sabre, which processes huge volumes of confidential information, this was an important milestone, which emphasized the capacity of the team to work with huge volumes of data as well as implement complicated data hygiene measures.
His skill set and ability to scale made it possible to design and implement workflows, manage dependencies, and resolve errors automatically. This was helpful in the course of handling the workload during a high-priority assignment in the travel organization.
Syed was required to create a comprehensive data pipeline for the Global Distribution System (GDS) of the organization. The system is of core importance as it provides constant and real-time updates about airline tickets, hotel bookings, and travel schedules and needs to be migrated to Google Cloud and particularly to Big Query Service. Furthermore, the orchestration of airflows was augmented to include the dependencies and facilitate real-time updates during the migration, causing no data loss and no downtime. When the migration was completed the company had the advantage of the capabilities of the GDS system and improved its ability to provide information to internal clients in real time thereby improving the quality of the management’s operational decisions.
In reference to this proposed project, Syed commented, “My work is helping to save cost on business processes, and also more sophisticated measures for diagnosing and preventing fraud in banks have become possible”. Automating the data ingestion, processing, and validation using Airflow, Syed helped the bank to cut the fraud detection process by 25 percent. This transition was done with full respect to security and privacy which allowed the institution to benefit from quicker and more effective methods of fraud detection without compromising its data governance standards.
Security has always been a priority in his professional dealings, as evidenced by his insistence that data migration efforts be efficient and secure. He adopted Google Cloud’s encryption technologies combined with Airflow’s supervising mechanisms, where he has found it possible to ensure proper data governance in all the projects he undertook. This has enabled the protection of client data from unauthorized access and processes in compliance with such international practices as GDPR and HIPAA.
In the contemporary business world that runs on real-time data access as one of the competitive edges, the same performances in the design of secure, high availability, and scalable data migration solutions is the reason he has been at the center of business transformation. Organizations were able to send their data to BigQuery, which in turn allowed them to use advanced analytic tools that generate real-time and predictive analytics and offer AI-powered data models. These mechanisms help to improve decision-making within the organization in various functions from fraud management to enhancing customer care services.
“Tasked with building an automated data pipeline from on-premise systems to BigQuery, I used Airflow’s flexible architecture to reduce manual intervention and ensure that the business could handle data at a petabyte scale”, Syed informs. The result was a system capable of delivering real-time financial insights, enhancing decision-making across departments, and optimizing key functions such as fraud prevention and risk analysis.
Syed Zia Ashraf’s contributions exemplify how robust data migration strategies, rooted in cutting-edge technology, can reshape industries. His work, from enhancing financial services to streamlining government systems, highlights his capability to drive secure, scalable, and efficient data transformations that empower organizations to thrive in the evolving digital landscape. By leveraging tools like Google Cloud’s BigQuery and Apache Airflow, Syed ensures seamless transitions, robust security, and real-time analytics, setting new benchmarks for operational excellence and strategic decision-making across sectors.
