Architectural glass fabricator leverages Pyramid Analytics for its technical and self-service capabilities
Viracon is the leading single-source architectural glass fabricator, known for its innovative products, reliable service, and technical expertise. Viracon is part of Apogee Enterprises, Inc. Founded in 1949 and headquartered in Minneapolis, Apogee provides distinctive metal and glass solutions for enclosing commercial buildings, as well as glass and acrylic solutions for picture framing and display applications.
THE CHALLENGE
Viracon began its data warehouse project in 2007. Their tech stack consisted of on-prem databases, Microsoft SQL and “lots of Excel.” They had been using ProClarity, which was sunsetted by Microsoft and replaced with Power BI. “We wanted an easy transition for our users at a reasonable cost,” says Jill Kubicek, Viracon’s senior developer. “The cost of Power BI was more than we wanted. “The other important thing is that we have a multidimensional cube. Power BI would take our multidimensional cube and generate a tabular cube in the background. Users would have had to do multiple refreshes. That was another big No.”
“We wanted something that just hits the cube we have developed already,” adds Bob Hoen, Viracon’s lead developer. “That’s how ProClarity worked, but we couldn’t find anything to replace it. We were wringing our hands trying to figure out what we were going to do. We also realized this was going to be a heck of a conversion effort, because all our users were trained on ProClarity.”
Viracon needed a platform that could handle its multidimensional cubes — and would be easy for its employees to learn quickly and use themselves. They needed Pyramid Analytics.
