Build It. Govern It. Own It.

Why You Don’t Have to Choose Between Speed and Control Anymore

In data strategy, few dilemmas are more persistent, (or more damaging) than the trade off between agility and governance. Give your analysts too much freedom and your architecture turns to chaos. Lock everything down and engineering becomes the bottleneck. We’ve lived in this no win scenario far too long.

At Cloudaeon, we believe there’s a better way.

At Cloudean, we work with leading enterprises to deliver data and AI solutions and help them realise the potential of an AI driven future. 

Access to clean, trusted data is a top priority for our customers and we’re proud to be Databricks and Prophecy partners to bring innovative solutions to our customers.

We were recently joined by experts from both Databricks and Prophecy on our Webinar Build It. Govern It. Own It. 3 Hard Hitting Steps to Self-Service Success on Databricks. Catch the replay here: https://youtu.be/1CfVd0d6wWQ

The discussion tackled the dilemma of providing access with governance head-on, showing how governed self-service ETL pipelines are not just possible, they’re already delivering measurable impact for enterprise teams.

As Rohit Amalnerkar, one of Cloudaeon’s lead engineers, put it:

“Speed without control breaks trust. Control without speed breaks momentum. The answer is governed self-service, where everyone can move fast but stay aligned.”

Let’s break that down, what it means in practice, why it matters now and what your team can do today to move forward.

The False Choice: Chaos or Bottleneck

Most organisations are caught between two extremes:

• Analysts moving fast, but creating BI-driven wildfires and shadow pipelines with zero version control
• Engineers protect quality, but are drowning in ticket queues and struggling to keep up with business demand

This isn’t just inefficient. It’s demoralising. It kills collaboration, burns out talent and stops innovation at the root.

Matt Darwin, Solution Architect at Prophecy, summed up the problem with clarity:

“Everyone opens the floodgates for self-service… and then wonders why there are 97 different answers for the same metric.”

Until now, most solutions tried to fix one side of the problem. Cloudaeon have used Prophecy and Databricks to solve both.

Governed Self-Service: The Best of Both Worlds

When we talk about governed self-service, we’re talking about enabling speed, with structure. Autonomy, with auditability. And most importantly, progress - with trust.

That’s what Prophecy on Databricks delivers:

• Drag and drop pipelines for analysts
  
• Git-based versioning for engineers
  
• Production-ready code as output
  
• CI/CD + observability built in
  
• Unity Catalog + Delta Lake to enforce security and compliance
  
  

As Matt put it:

“Prophecy generates native Spark code. You can run it anywhere. You own it forever.”

This isn’t just developer friendly low code. It’s enterprise grade, extensible and built to scale.

What Surprised Us Most

Implementing this model across enterprise clients, we expected resistance, but what surprised us was just how fast teams adapted.

Analysts loved the speed. Engineers loved the guardrails - and leadership loved the business results.

As Rohit shared:

“We expected pushback…but what we saw instead was trust. Analysts could build independently, but within a framework. Engineers saw their standards respected. Everyone moved faster. Together.”

Real-World Results: M&S Case Study

One of the most compelling proof points came from our work with Marks & Spencer.

Together with Prophecy and Databricks, Cloudaeon helped M&S reimagine their ETL pipeline strategy and the results were dramatic:

• £3.96 million in cost savings in year one
  
• 62% faster ETL processing time
  
• 89% reduction in delivery cycles
  
• 97% improvement in data quality
  
  

But perhaps more importantly, the business unlocked capacity. Analysts and engineers were free to focus on higher-value work and deliver new products faster than ever before.

What Should You Do Next?

If your team are facing the same trade-off between agility and control, here’s what we recommend:

1. Benchmark Where You Are

Cloudaeon offers a free ETL Benchmark Assessment to help you understand how your pipelines perform against industry standards and identify where modernisation could deliver the most value.

2. Try It for Yourself

Cloudaeon’s ETL Innovation Lab gives you hands-on experience building governed pipelines with Prophecy + Databricks, backed by our delivery team. We’ll help you prove the ROI, fast.

3. Train Your Team

Cloudaeon is launching an 8-module video tutorial series showing exactly how governed self-service with Prophecy works in practice, from UI to Git to deployment.

“This isn’t just a tool choice. It’s a mindset shift from control versus speed to control with speed.”

Final Thoughts

This is the new reality:

You can build pipelines faster.
You can govern them fully.
You can stop choosing between the two.

And when you do, you’ll unlock more than efficiency. You’ll unlock trust, collaboration, and capacity across your entire data function.

That’s what it means to Build it. Govern it. Own it.

Ready to get started?

Book a free benchmark session with Cloudaeon to see how Prophecy on Databricks can unlock faster pipelines, cleaner code, and greater control. You’ll get a clear view of where you are, and a roadmap to where you could be. https://www.cloudaeon.com/what-we-do/data/etl-optimisation

📺 Missed the live webinar? Watch the full replay here:
https://youtu.be/1CfVd0d6wWQ