January 22, 2025
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Data pipelines are critical for modern businesses, but they often fail due to predictable issues. Research shows that 62% of organizations face monthly data pipeline failures, leading to delays, lost revenue, and eroded trust.
In this blog, we highlight five common pipeline failures and show how Rakuten SixthSense’s Data Observability platform eliminates them, ensuring data reliability and pipeline resilience.
1. Schema Changes Causing Data Breakage
The Problem:
Unexpected schema changes, such as added or removed columns, can break downstream workflows, leaving data teams scrambling for fixes. These disruptions ripple across analytics, machine learning models, and reporting tools, creating bottlenecks that stall decision-making.
Data Impact:
- 48% of engineers report schema issues as the leading cause of downtime.
- Companies experience an average of 3 hours of downtime per schema failure, costing thousands in lost productivity.
Rakuten SixthSense Solution:
- Proactive Alerts: Detect schema changes in real-time, minimizing downstream impacts.
- Impact Analysis: Identify which systems and teams will be affected, enabling quick resolution.
- Automated Fix Suggestions: Provide actionable steps to adapt workflows to schema modifications without manual intervention.
By addressing schema changes preemptively, Rakuten SixthSense ensures that your data pipelines remain robust and adaptable to evolving data structures.
2. Pipeline Orchestration Failures
The Problem:
Jobs in orchestration tools like Apache Airflow, Dagster, or Prefect often fail due to broken dependencies, resource constraints, or misconfigurations. These failures result in incomplete workflows, delaying data availability.
Data Impact:
- 37% of data pipelines experience orchestration delays weekly.
- Critical processes like ETL can be delayed by hours, impacting business operations.
Rakuten SixthSense Solution:
- Real-Time Monitoring: Continuously track job statuses, identifying and flagging failures as they occur.
- Dependency Insights: Map job dependencies to pinpoint root causes and suggest fixes.
- Anomaly Alerts: Notify teams when job runtimes deviate from normal patterns, preventing cascading failures.
With Rakuten SixthSense, your orchestration tools become more reliable, ensuring workflows run smoothly and on time.
3. Data Quality Degradation
The Problem:
Inconsistent or incomplete data erodes trust in analytics and decision-making. Issues like null values, duplicates, and outliers go unnoticed until they’ve caused significant damage.
Data Impact:
- Bad data costs companies an average of $15 million annually.
- Teams spend 30% of their time troubleshooting data quality issues instead of deriving insights.
Rakuten SixthSense Solution:
- Data Health Metrics: Continuously monitor key metrics like null values, schema integrity, and duplication rates.
- Anomaly Detection: Use AI to spot deviations from historical data patterns that indicate quality issues.
- Custom Dashboards: Visualize quality metrics for quick diagnosis and resolution.
By ensuring data quality at every stage, Rakuten SixthSense enables better decision-making and boosts team productivity.
4. Anomalies in Data Volume and Freshness
The Problem:
Unexpected spikes, drops in data volume, or delayed updates disrupt downstream processes, leading to incomplete reports and missed deadlines.
Data Impact:
- 53% of organizations cite anomalies as their biggest data reliability challenge.
- Late data updates lead to outdated insights, impacting time-sensitive decisions.
Rakuten SixthSense Solution:
- AI-Powered Anomaly Detection: Identify irregularities in data volume, freshness, and distribution.
- Customizable Thresholds: Set specific alert thresholds to tailor monitoring to your pipeline’s unique requirements.
- Freshness Alerts: Ensure timely delivery of data to critical downstream systems.
With Rakuten SixthSense, you can confidently deliver timely and reliable data, even in dynamic environments.
5. Lack of End-to-End Pipeline Visibility
The Problem:
Without a unified view of the entire data pipeline, troubleshooting is slow and inefficient. Teams operate in silos, wasting time diagnosing issues.
Data Impact:
- 45% of data engineers spend more than half their time firefighting pipeline issues.
- Disjointed systems and tools result in fragmented diagnostics, delaying resolution.
Rakuten SixthSense Solution:
- Unified Dashboards: Provide a 360° view of pipeline health, from ingestion to consumption.
- Collaboration Tools: Enable teams to share insights, alerts, and resolutions in one place.
- Centralized Metadata: Offer comprehensive context for every data asset, aiding in root cause analysis.
Rakuten SixthSense simplifies pipeline management, reducing resolution times and fostering better collaboration.
Why Rakuten SixthSense Outperforms
Rakuten SixthSense combines cutting-edge technology with user-friendly design to address the most pressing data pipeline challenges:
- AI-Driven Insights: Actionable recommendations beyond basic alerts, making troubleshooting faster and more effective.
- Seamless Integrations: Works seamlessly with leading tools like Snowflake, Tableau, Apache Airflow, and Databricks, ensuring a smooth fit into your existing ecosystem.
- Enterprise-Scale Reliability: Handles high-volume pipelines without performance degradation, making it ideal for large and growing enterprises.
- Proactive Solutions: Helps you move from reactive firefighting to proactive pipeline management.
Ready to Eliminate Data Pipeline Failures?
Your data pipelines should drive insights, not headaches. With Rakuten SixthSense, say goodbye to downtime and hello to seamless data reliability.
Schedule your free demo today!
Conclusion: Future-Proof Your Pipelines
Data pipeline failures are costly but preventable. With Rakuten SixthSense, your data is monitored, reliable, and ready for the demands of AI-driven business.
Transform your data operations today. Discover Rakuten SixthSense.