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Hi, I'm Cal Mitchell.
I've been a full-time data engineer and data engineering consultant for 6 years. In that time, I've been a part of many data projects for large and small companies.
In small companies, the biggest challenge is usually limited resources. They don't have enough money, engineers, or the right expertise to execute their vision. That is not the case at large organizations, however.
In large organizations, the challenge is usually keeping project momentum going. Even at companies with just a few dozen employees, you will almost always bump up against competing interests, time-wasting processes, and arbitrary access rules. This is especially hard if you're an outside contractor, as you're never quite "one of them". And don't even get me started on office politics.
This blog post outlines the roadblocks that come up over and over again at mid to large size organizations, and how my latest product, Albatross, is designed to bypass them.
Bureaucracy
Bureaucracy isn't necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it's a good idea to make sure one person can't unilaterally break systems that many others rely on.
However, anyone who has worked at a large company has probably experienced something like this: You want to access system X to integrate data into system Y. You have a great meeting and decide to greenlight the project, but before you write any code, you'll need to:
- Submit a ticket for this
- Follow up with PERSON A for that
- Let PERSON B know that they need to change networking rules
- PERSON B is out of the office, can you please wait til next week, or talk to PERSON C?
- Etc
Data engineers can waste weeks dealing with internal bureaucracy just to set up new tools. I designed Albatross to cut through this red tape by operating fully self-hosted, within a sandboxed cloud environment in your control. Also, it pulls data from your database backups rather than live systems.
The idea here is to minimize time-consuming cybersecurity reviews, complicated IAM permission requests, and networking headaches. It "just works", without having to ask anyone for anything. Really!
Permissions
Albatross requires a minimal set of IAM permissions and operates entirely within a networking sandbox. It doesn't need access to any of your existing cloud resources, and you can restrict outbound networking access exclusively to your data warehouse. This significantly simplifies security reviews and reduces the overhead associated with IAM management.
Albatross simply restores the latest backup of your database, extracts data into your data warehouse, then deletes the backup—no direct database connections required. This approach neatly sidesteps technical objections and reduces configuration to a minimum, thanks to a straightforward UI.
Lower Costs
To keep Albatross affordable, I bootstrapped initial development myself. The tool stays focused on its core purpose—moving data reliably and securely—without bloating the product with unnecessary features.
Leveraging cloud-native architectures further minimizes overhead, so your total cost of ownership stays low. In practice, Albatross typically costs around $100 to $150 per month in static cloud resources, plus additional hourly usage costs for worker nodes (only incurred while actively running data transfers).
Large companies using Albatross will likely save thousands of dollars per month compared to other managed solutions.
No New Vendor Setup
Albatross is available exclusively through your cloud marketplace. This means there's no need to go through a lengthy vendor approval process, vendor onboarding paperwork, or financial due diligence typically associated with engaging new software providers. Because you're using your existing cloud provider account, all expenses for Albatross are consolidated directly into your current billing system.
Each Albatross resource is automatically and clearly tagged, allowing you to effortlessly track, monitor, and attribute costs across different departments or projects. This streamlined billing integration makes it easy to maintain clear visibility and budgeting control without adding any new financial overhead.
Less Time Developing Airflow DAGs
One of the hidden costs of data engineering is the significant amount of time spent setting up and maintaining data pipelines, particularly using orchestration tools like Apache Airflow. Airflow DAGs require continuous attention, monitoring, troubleshooting, and regular updates as schemas or infrastructure change.
Albatross substantially reduces the amount of engineering time required for pipeline development and maintenance. Its simple, self-contained design eliminates most complexities inherent in Airflow setups, allowing your engineering team to focus on more valuable tasks, such as data analysis and business-critical projects.
By choosing Albatross, your team can spend far less time managing infrastructure and more time leveraging data effectively.
Targeted Use Case
Albatross is designed primarily for midsize to large companies needing to move data from cloud-native databases (such as AWS RDS) to data warehouses like Snowflake. The tool currently supports AWS and Snowflake, though its underlying technology can accommodate other relational databases upon request.
How It Works
Albatross provides a clean, intuitive interface listing databases available in your cloud environment. From there, you can select databases to migrate immediately or schedule regular transfers. The process is transparent and secure:
- It restores the latest snapshot of your database.
- Extracts the necessary data directly from the backup to your warehouse.
- Immediately terminates the restored backup upon completion.
By design, Albatross reduces friction at every step, ensuring teams spend more time analyzing data instead of waiting for data pipelines.
If your business needs a straightforward, secure, and cost-effective way to move data into Snowflake, Albatross might be exactly what you're looking for.
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