MessageBird's Transformation with ClickHouse: A Case Study on Enhanced Performance and Cost Efficiency
Technology Category
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Database Management & Storage
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Storage Services
Applicable Industries
- Cement
- Construction & Infrastructure
Applicable Functions
- Logistics & Transportation
- Maintenance
Use Cases
- Behavior & Emotion Tracking
- Real-Time Location System (RTLS)
Services
- Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
About The Customer
MessageBird is a cloud communications platform that connects businesses and customers through seamless, contextual conversations. The company processes billions of messages, calls, and emails for over 29,000 customers, making it heavily dependent on data-driven insights for efficient operations. MessageBird's services include real-time analytics, performance monitoring, and customer-facing dashboards and APIs. The company is committed to efficiency and innovation, and it continually seeks to improve its services and manage growing data volumes. The transition to ClickHouse Cloud is a testament to this commitment, as it has enabled the company to handle high ingestion traffic, save on costs, and enhance its service delivery.
The Challenge
MessageBird, a cloud communications platform, processes billions of messages, calls, and emails for over 29,000 customers. The company heavily relies on data-driven insights for efficient operations, with ClickHouse, an analytical backend, playing a crucial role since 2017. However, MessageBird faced challenges with its initial setup on MySQL due to scalability and latency issues. The company needed a solution that could handle high-volume data ingestion, provide low response times, and support real-time analytics for customer-facing dashboards and APIs. Additionally, the company required a system that could monitor the delivery performance of SMS messages and promptly identify anomalies. The challenge was to find a solution that could meet these needs while also being cost-effective.
The Solution
MessageBird adopted ClickHouse in 2017, transitioning from MySQL to overcome scalability and latency challenges. To further scale its services and manage growing data volumes, MessageBird migrated from a self-managed, on-premise solution to ClickHouse Cloud. This transition was driven by the need for a more scalable, resilient, and efficient data infrastructure, and was significantly influenced by cost considerations. The migration to ClickHouse Cloud brought significant benefits, including substantial cost savings from the shift from SSD storage to more economical S3 storage. Moreover, the use of Projections in ClickHouse became more cost-effective due to S3's low data storage costs. MessageBird's architecture in ClickHouse Cloud integrates several modern cloud technologies, including Google Pub/Sub, Apache Beam pipelines running on Google Cloud Dataflow, and BigTable for low latency and high throughput lookup queries.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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