Every AI initiative you’ve approved is waiting on the same warehouse. It was built for scheduled reports, not for the AI, streaming, and real-time questions the business asks now. Relevant Software modernizes it around what you’re trying to do next: a diagnosis first, then the strategy that fixes what limits you and leaves the rest alone.
Legacy systems modernizedAging platforms rebuilt with AI-assisted engineering
20%
Fewer bugsDue to AI-assisted delivery with senior review on every release
246
Projects deliveredEngineering excellence that solves industry challenges
92%
Senior talentTop software engineers on our team
10+
Years of data engineering expertiseDelivering warehouses, pipelines, and lakehouses into production
Signs your data warehouse needs modernization
Analysts spend more time preparing data than analyzing it
Manual exports, reconciliations, and workarounds sit between a business question and a trusted answer.
New analytical questions require new engineering
The warehouse serves the questions it was modeled for; anything beyond them needs a pipeline build, so reporting lags behind the business.
Engineering capacity goes to maintenance rather than new capability
Most of the data team's time is spent keeping existing pipelines running instead of extending the platform.
AI and ML initiatives stall at the data layer
Models can't reach production because the warehouse offers no streaming data, no feature pipelines, and no lineage to trace their inputs.
Departments maintain separate versions of the same metrics
The warehouse can't serve every team from one governed source, so parallel extracts multiply and KPI definitions diverge.
Operational decisions require data the warehouse only delivers overnight
Batch-only refresh cycles can't support real-time or same-day decisions.
Our data warehouse modernization services
Modernization assessment and diagnosis
Modernization strategy and roadmap
Cloud data warehouse modernization
ETL to ELT re-engineering
Real-time and streaming architecture
Lakehouse architecture adoption
Governance and cost control, built in
AI and ML enablement
Modernization assessment and diagnosis
Modernization strategy and roadmap
Cloud data warehouse modernization
ETL to ELT re-engineering
Real-time and streaming architecture
Lakehouse architecture adoption
Governance and cost control, built in
AI and ML enablement
Modernization assessment and diagnosis
The assessment maps your estate — schemas, pipelines, workloads, and costs — and recovers the dependencies that were never documented, through AI-driven legacy modernization with senior review.
A written read on what limits you: performance, cost, or capability
Dependency and lineage maps recovered from code and query history
A fact base your team can challenge before any strategy is chosen
Modernization strategy and roadmap
Strategy turns the diagnosis into a decision: which workloads get rehosted, replatformed, refactored, or rebuilt — and which stay where they are.
A documented strategy per workload, with the reasoning behind each call
A phased roadmap with dependencies, each phase priced and dated
A cost-of-doing-nothing baseline, so the decision has a number on both sides
Cloud data warehouse modernization
Re-platforming moves the warehouse onto a cloud-native engine — Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks, or Microsoft Fabric — where compute and storage scale independently and the maintenance burden drops.
Compute decoupled from storage, sized to real query patterns
Elastic scale replacing procurement cycles and license tiers
Cost guardrails and monitoring from the first workload
ETL to ELT re-engineering
Re-engineering rebuilds brittle, hand-maintained ETL into version-controlled ELT the warehouse runs itself, landing in a medallion architecture that keeps raw, cleaned, and business-ready layers separate.
Bronze, silver, and gold layers, each with a defined contract, so a change in raw data stops at the boundary
Transformation logic moved into the warehouse as tested, documented, incremental models
Pipelines under code review and monitoring, like production software
Real-time and streaming architecture
Streaming re-architecture brings the warehouse within minutes of your operations, for the decisions overnight batch can’t serve — built through big data services where volumes call for it. We separate the cases that need true streaming from the ones micro-batch already covers, so latency spend follows the use case.
Change data capture through Debezium, with Apache Kafka, Kinesis, or Pub/Sub carrying the stream
True streaming on Apache Flink or Snowpipe Streaming where seconds matter, micro-batch where minutes are enough
Freshness targets agreed per table, with operational and analytical workloads isolated so one never starves the other
Lakehouse architecture adoption
A lakehouse serves BI and data science from one platform, for estates where unstructured data and ML now sit beside reporting.
Open table formats that keep data portable across engines
One governance and access model across raw files and modeled tables
A warehouse-grade semantic layer, so analysts see tables, not file paths
Governance and cost control, built in
Modernization is the point to build governance and cost control into the platform itself, with ownership and quality rules through data management.
Ownership, lineage, and quality rules that hold as the platform scales
Row- and column-level security aligned with GDPR, HIPAA, or your regulator
FinOps monitoring that keeps cloud spend predictable as usage grows
Modernization gives models the same governed platform your dashboards run on, with lineage that traces every model input back to its source.
A feature store and vector search on the warehouse itself, so models read from governed tables
In-platform ML through Snowflake Cortex, BigQuery ML, or Databricks Mosaic AI, matched to your target platform
Governed marts that ground RAG retrieval, with text-to-SQL over the semantic layer through MCP
Rehost, replatform, refactor, or rebuild: choosing the strategy
Rehost — lift and shift
Move the warehouse as-is to new infrastructure. Fastest and lowest-risk; it fixes where the warehouse runs, not how it works. The choice when the platform is the only problem and a deadline is real.
Replatform — move and improve
Shift to a cloud-native engine and adopt its economics — elastic scale, decoupled compute — without redesigning the model. The common middle path, executed as data warehouse migration services once the target is set.
Read More →
Refactor — re-architect what exists
Rebuild pipelines, models, and governance on the new platform while keeping the data and its meaning. The choice when the design, not just the platform, is holding you back.
Rebuild — start clean
A greenfield warehouse on a modern platform, through data warehouse development services, when the existing model is beyond economical repair. Most estates need different strategies for different workloads — the assessment names which is which, and leaving a workload alone is always a valid call.
Read More →
Your AI roadmap can’t outrun the platform beneath it. We modernize the platform first.
How a data warehouse modernization engagement works
A written diagnosis of what limits you
Your estate, its costs, and its constraints, measured and put in writing. You see which problems are the platform’s and which are the design’s.
A strategy document, one call per workload
Each workload gets a rehost, replatform, refactor, rebuild, or leave-as-is decision, with the reasoning recorded beside it. Yours to challenge before anything is committed.
A roadmap with cost on both sides
Phases priced and dated against a cost-of-doing-nothing baseline, so the business sees both numbers.
A modernized platform, built in stages
Workloads re-architect one at a time through our data engineering services, each validated against current outputs, with reporting live throughout.
Governance and cost controls you can see
Lineage, access, and FinOps monitoring shipped inside the platform, so governance is part of the build.
A platform your team owns and can extend
Documentation, runbooks, and training, handed over. Support continues at the level you choose — from advisory to full operation.
Technologies we use for data warehouse modernization
Target platforms
Snowflake, Google BigQuery, Databricks, Microsoft Fabric
Lakehouse & open table formats
Apache Iceberg, Delta Lake, Apache Parquet, Unity Catalog, AWS Glue Data Catalog
Why choose Relevant for data warehouse modernization
A strategy for every workload
Each workload gets its own rehost / replatform / refactor / rebuild decision — with the reasoning recorded and the option to leave it alone.
Vendor-agnostic by design
Platform recommendations scored on your workloads’ merits — no reseller margins or partnership quotas behind the advice.
AI-assisted delivery with senior review
The Relevant AI Delivery Framework™ cuts delivery time by up to 50% with up to 20% fewer bugs through AI-assisted development— with every release still passing senior code review.
Certified security and compliance
ISO 27001-certified processes; GDPR and HIPAA controls designed into the modernized platform from the first workload.
Dates that hold
99% of projects delivered on time — modernization phased so value arrives before the last phase does.
A stable team across the engagement
96% employee retention — the engineers who diagnose your estate are the ones who re-architect it.
What clients are saying about working with us
4.9 is our Clutch average
Whether to modernize the warehouse has an easy answer. Which workloads is the one that matters.
The assessment answers it, workload by workload — modernize what limits you, keep what works.
Nataliia DynkaClient Partnership DirectorNelia MorozykHead of Sales Operations
Frequently asked questions
Our warehouse works — slow and expensive, but it works. Is modernization worth it now?
“Works” and “worth keeping” are different tests. A warehouse can produce correct reports and still cost more every quarter, block every AI initiative, and consume the team in maintenance. Decide it with two numbers side by side:
The cost of standing still — maintenance hours, license renewals, legacy-versus-cloud spend, and the value of initiatives the platform currently blocks.
The cost of the move — the phased price of modernizing only what limits you.
A rough version you can run today: add up the engineering hours spent last quarter keeping the warehouse alive versus improving it. If maintenance won, the platform has already become the project.
What's the difference between modernizing and migrating our warehouse?
Migration changes where the warehouse runs — same reports, validated parity on a new engine.
Modernization changes what it can do — real-time data, AI workloads, elastic scale, governed self-service.
They often run in one program, but the decision differs. If your reports are right and you just need them faster and cheaper on a new engine, that’s data warehouse migration services. If the architecture itself can’t serve what the business now asks, that’s modernization.
How do we choose between lift-and-shift and a full re-architecture?
Decide it per workload. For each major workload, name the complaint:
“It’s slow or expensive” → replatform (lift-and-shift onto a cloud-native engine).
“It can’t do what we need” → refactor (re-architect the model, pipelines, and governance).
Most estates are a mix, plus a rebuild for the parts beyond repair and a leave-alone for the parts that work. If sorting your own workloads raises more questions than it settles, that first call is exactly what the assessment resolves — contact us and it comes back as a decision per workload, with the reasoning attached.
Will modernization disrupt the reporting our business runs every day?
No, because it’s phased. Workloads modernize one at a time, each validated against its current outputs before anyone depends on the new version, with existing reporting live throughout — there’s no overnight switch where the whole warehouse changes at once. A question worth putting to any modernization partner: which report moves first, and how will we know it still matches? A partner who can answer that per phase is running a controlled program.
How much does data warehouse modernization cost, and how do we justify it?
Cost follows the strategy — a rehost is priced like an infrastructure move, a refactor like an engineering project, and most estates are a mix. The justification comes from two computable numbers:
The phased cost of modernizing what limits you.
The cost of not doing it — rising maintenance, license renewals, and blocked initiatives.
Bring your last four quarters of warehouse run-cost to a scoping call and the trade-off gets concrete — contact us and the first thing you’ll get back is a diagnosis read.
Can you modernize a warehouse another vendor built, with little documentation?
Yes — undocumented estates are the normal starting point. The assessment reconstructs what the warehouse actually does from its code, schedules, and query history before any strategy is set, so the plan rests on how the system behaves rather than on documentation that was never written. Most estates keep their data and much of their logic; what they gain is a platform that can finally be reasoned about.
Is our warehouse the reason our AI projects keep stalling?
Often, and it’s diagnosable. AI workloads need what modern reporting needs, plus more:
Fresh or streaming data, not overnight batch.
Unstructured data alongside tables.
Feature pipelines and lineage a model’s inputs can be traced through.
Retrieval-ready marts and vector search, when the use case is RAG or search across your own documents.
A legacy warehouse usually offers none of these. The test: take the AI use case closest to funding and list the data it needs and how fresh. If that data can’t be served at the required freshness, the first project is the platform underneath the model, not the model.
Modernize what limits you, keep what works — start with the diagnosis.
Success stories
4AI modules shipped in the product
Childcare Data Pipeline Automation
Built a daily data pipeline with AI modules for an EdTech operator running 8 childcare centers