In July 2023, Matillion launched their fully SaaS platform called Data Productivity Cloud, aiming to create a future-ready, everyone-ready, and AI-ready environment that companies can easily adopt and start automating their data pipelines coding, low-coding, or even no-coding at all.
That platform keeps evolving every day, becoming a game changer for companies, and it is also very easy to deploy your own environment with no technical background. Everyone can do it in a matter of minutes.
In this blog, we will show you how easy it is to get your Data Productivity Cloud environment up and running and how you can start your studies on the platform.
What is Matillion Data Productivity Cloud?
Matillion’s Data Productivity Cloud is a versatile platform designed to increase the productivity of data teams. It provides a unified platform for creating and managing data pipelines that are effective for both coders and non-coders.
The platform features AI-powered tools that enable the integration of large language models (LLM) into your data pipelines, as well as a great connector library and a visual, low-code design that supports a wide range of data movement and transformation operations.
The platform simplifies data pipeline orchestration by providing tools for automation, scheduling, and comprehensive visibility. It’s designed to work with people of all skill levels and interact smoothly with existing technology stacks.
Matillion is also built for scalability and future data demands, with support for cloud data platforms such as Snowflake Data Cloud, Databricks, Amazon Redshift, Microsoft Azure Synapse, and Google BigQuery, making it future-ready, everyone-ready, and AI-ready.
Its core, PipelineOS power, uses stateless microservice agents for scalable data flow and transformation while keeping costs low and performance high, with consumption pricing based on time spent running data pipelines rather than simply being active. As a result, Matillion is an excellent choice for businesses wishing to optimize their data operations in a scalable and user-friendly environment.
Why Does it Matter?
Matillion’s Data Productivity Cloud is a pivotal tool for modern data teams, designed to accelerate data delivery and transform the ETL process. It stands out by simplifying and automating data movement, bridging the skills gap in data transformation, and handling the complexities of pipeline orchestration at scale.
The platform offers unlimited scaling, enabling concurrent processing of tasks at high speeds and on a large scale using containerized agents. It also supports unlimited users and projects, facilitating collaboration through Git integration and ensuring reliability at scale.
Additionally, Matillion offers optional hybrid deployment for enhanced security and transparent, flexible pay-as-you-go pricing. This platform is particularly beneficial for businesses looking to modernize their data handling processes, ensuring efficiency, scalability, and cost-effectiveness in their data operations.
How to Get Started with Matillion Data Productivity Cloud
That looks unbelievable, but trust me, you can get started with Matillion Data Productivity Cloud from 0 to start your first job in around 5 minutes. That is a very straightforward process in order to get your trial environment ready to go, and just a few extra minutes if you want to connect to your own data warehouse.
Creating Your Account
First things first, let’s create your Matillion account in order to deploy your Data Productivity Cloud. Go to the Matillion webpage and click on the Get Started For Free button. That will drive you to the login page.
Here, you can create a new account from scratch. You can use your Google or Microsoft account to make it faster or create a new user account by providing an email address and password. Pick the one that suits you best.
Once you log in for the first time, your credentials will be saved so you can use them again in the future, automatically logging in.
You will receive an email to activate your account. There, you will find a link for activating your account, which will direct you to the Matillion Hub to complete your profile. If you create the account by not connecting to Google or Microsoft, it will prompt you to complete your personal information; otherwise, you will skip that step.
The final step for creating your account is to configure the region where your account will be made. Once you select that, press continue, and your account will be created.
That account creation process will take no longer than 2 minutes if you create it with a Google or Microsoft account.
Starting With a Matillion-hosted Warehouse
After you conclude your account creation, the first screen you will get will be to pick the platform you would like to get connected to. Let’s take the first option, Use a Matillion Trial Warehouse. That will complete all the configuration necessary for you, making a trial warehouse for you and leaving all the work of creating the infrastructure and connections to Matillion to manage it for you.
After confirming your selection, the next page will show you a short video about the platform in order to get you started with the power you are unlocking for you and your company. During this time, Matillion will be configuring everything for you.
Once that is concluded, the next step will be the welcome page, where you can develop your first workflow! Yes, just like that.
That is perfect for you if you are learning about the platform or want to explore the features available. That trial account will give you 14 days to test the platform.
As you can see, there were a few steps to conclude, from creating your account to having a platform already prepared for use. That process will not take longer than 3 minutes!
Setting up Your Own Data Warehouse
Now that you have tested the trial account, do you want to connect with your own data warehouse? Or would you even go to that directly? No problem. Let’s get that connected!
We will connect to Snowflake here, but if you want to connect to any other warehouse that is not showing up for you or is showing as coming soon, reach out to the Matillion team to find out how to get the connection working.
Alright, if you are making the connection to Snowflake as your first one, just pick the Connect to Snowflake option instead of the Use a Matillion trial warehouse option; otherwise, you can click on the Matillion logo at any time to get you back to the Matillion hub home page.
On the Hub home page, you will find the Design data pipelines option. There, you will be able to create a new project, this time using your own Snowflake instance.
Create a new project by clicking on the Add new project button. That will drive you to another page where you will configure the new project.
You will first be prompted to add the project name and data platform to be used. Here, you can also add some extra details about what your project is intended for, but that is optional.
In this example, I’m naming the project as Snowflake_Connected and using Snowflake as the data platform.
Once you get that done, you will be asked if you want to have a full SaaS environment with the infrastructure totally managed by Matillion or if you would prefer to go with a hybrid approach, having the Matillion agent inside your organization’s cloud.
We will select the full SaaS offering, but if you want to go with the hybrid version, here is documentation to explore the requirements and steps necessary.
The next step will be to give a name to the environment you’re creating. There is not much to say about that step; feel free to take the name that suits you best. In the future, you can create other environments for your project to manage your deployments.
Lastly, you will need to enter your Snowflake account and credentials to get the Data Productivity Cloud connected to it. For that, you only need to get your account information (the text between “https://” and “.snowflakecomputing.com”) and the same credentials you use to log in or any other credentials that you believe would be more appropriate.
Done! Now, you can start to develop your own Matillion job using the Data Productivity Cloud connected to your data warehouse. You will land on the project page this time instead of in the development canvas, but you just need to click on the main branch in this window to go to the canvas and start developing.
Connecting your own data warehouse takes a bit more time than getting the trial, but it will only add a little more time. You will take up to 10 minutes from not even having an account to get your own environment connected to your data warehouse.
Enjoy!
Now is the time to enjoy your new Data Productivity Cloud environment! From here, you will be able to start your first jobs and automate your data pipelines in a collaborative environment with a friendly interface, high performance, high scalability, and easy manageability.
Learn More About Data Productivity Cloud
Now that your own Data Productivity Cloud is ready, it is time to learn more about it! If that is your first time using a Matillion product, I highly recommend you explore the Matillion Academy and conclude the Matillion Data Productivity Cloud, Foundations course. That will give you a very good idea of how to use it and the many aspects of the platform.
Suppose this is not your first time using Matillion products; you are already familiar with Matillion ETL. In that case, you will notice that the Data Productivity Cloud is very similar in all aspects of usage, so you will find all relevant components present.
Furthermore, it is still interesting for you to complete the same foundations course to understand better how the platform works and all the features available. I’m sure you will like to watch that course!
Closing
In this blog, you learned how to start your first Data Productivity Cloud instance and notice how easy and quick it is! If you want to adopt the platform for a longer time than the 14-day trial, you will need to upgrade your license.
If you want any further information about the Data Productivity Cloud, how it works, and how it could help your business, contact our team of experts. We will assist you in getting the best results for your data engineering and analytics challenges.
