Gaining Enhanced Analytics out of the Box Using ADA on AWS with Stax

Founded in 2015, Stax is a native AWS cloud-management platform that helps AWS customers with preconfigured guardrails to expedite migrations safely while providing ongoing alerts in near real time and monitoring for security, risk management, cost, and compliance. To serve its customers, Stax uses multiple customer-relationship-management systems, all of which are separate from one another. As a product-led company, Stax wanted to centralize all data across these disparate systems to gain actionable insights. This decision will help the company improve customer engagements while providing a personalized experience to expedite customer conversions.

“In order for us to improve our decision-making, we needed to bring our data together so that we could build out a single view of the customer and identify where we need touch points in our customers’ journeys,” says Adam Beavis, managing director at Stax. Equally as important, Stax was looking for simple, out-of-the-box solutions that its teams could adopt without requiring them to have expertise in data management.

Stax began looking for ready-to-deploy solutions through the AWS Solutions Library, and in 2022, Stax discovered ADA on AWS—one of its offerings. The company learned that AWS was offering private previews for AWS Partners to pilot this new solution, and it took advantage of this opportunity.

For 3 months, Stax underwent a beta testing period using ADA on AWS, processing 2–3 TB of data from thousands of data sources daily. Not only can Stax scale the solution to the demand of its data processing, but its teams found that ADA on AWS was simple to implement and use. “Because ADA on AWS was accessible and ready out of the box, it really shortened our time to value,” says Rowan Udell, solutions architect at Stax. “We were able to build up our understanding of the solution while experiencing immediate benefits.” Compared to building its own analytics solution from scratch, the company estimates that it saved 6–12 months of time on undifferentiated heavy lifting using ADA on AWS. “We can deliver up to 12 months of work in 1 week,” says Beavis. “That’s game changing.”

Additionally, Stax doesn’t have to implement its own governance or monitoring tools when it uses ADA on AWS. Instead, its teams can use the service’s built-in functionalities to quickly filter and enrich its data. Not only can Stax gain richer actionable insights about its software and customers, but its teams can view these analytics in one centralized dashboard. For instance, the company can track, visualize, and analyze user engagement and behavior, report on cost per customer, perform customer journey analyses, and more. “We can make better, more informed decisions about what products to build from the insights that we get using ADA on AWS,” says Beavis. “We’re hoping to reduce time to sale and customer velocity using this solution.”

Stax also benefited from the scalable, serverless foundations that underpin ADA on AWS. By quickly scaling to demand, the company can improve its overall operational efficiency while reducing overhead. “The solution is really tailored to our needs,” says Udell. “Rather than paying up front for licensing costs or other expenses, we pay only for our consumption.”

Based on its experience testing ADA on AWS, Stax plans to connect more of its data sources to this solution. The company also plans a phase two, which will include offering ADA on AWS as a stand-alone software as a solution to other organizations that are looking for a safe, simple, and efficient way to kick off their own data analytics projects. “There’s a lot of value in having a solution that aligns with our company goals,” says Mark Wolfe, engineering lead at Stax. “Using ADA will provide us with the ability to focus on our core offerings and build up the pillar of value for our customers."