NG Nordic consolidates its data landscape in Databricks

NG Nordic is a leading provider of circular solutions and environmental services across the Nordic region. Following the acquisition of Fortum Recycling & Waste and its subsequent combination with NG Group, NG Nordic brought together two organisations with two separate data platforms, each with different technologies, source systems, data models and development practices. 

To simplify its data landscape and establish a scalable foundation for future growth, NG Nordic launched a data platform consolidation initiative. Together with Tieto Tech Consulting as its implementation partner, NG Nordic is migrating workloads from its two legacy platforms to a unified, modern data platform based on Databricks and Microsoft Power BI.

The merger with Fortum Recycling & Waste resulted in two operational data platforms. While both supported important business processes, the parallel setup introduced complexity across architecture, data flows, development practices, governance and operational ownership.

The consolidation covers a substantial data landscape, including more than 130 reports, approximately 1,000 bronze-layer tables fed by around 35 source systems. The platform also delivers to six external business systems. These systems support activities ranging from budgeting and financial consolidation to specialized analytics and customer-facing portals. Managing these dependencies across two separate platforms added both technical and operational complexity to the migration.

NG Nordic therefore set out to create one common data platform without disrupting ongoing business operations or reducing the quality of existing services.

As the migration progresses, NG Nordic is establishing a common governance layer through Unity Catalog. The catalog currently encompasses approximately 2,000 data objects, four foreign catalogs and two Delta Shares, giving NG Nordic greater visibility into where data originates, how it is transformed, where it is consumed and who has access. Combined with documentation and lineage capabilities, this also makes tables, columns and downstream dependencies easier for teams to understand and manage.

Lakehouse Federation is already being used to provide controlled access to data in external PostgreSQL and SQL databases through the Databricks environment. This reduces unnecessary data movement while bringing more of NG Nordic’s distributed data landscape under a consistent governance model.

NG Nordic is also evaluating additional connectors, including SAP Business Cloud Connector and Microsoft Dynamics integration, to simplify data ingestion.

The consolidation is still in progress, but it is establishing a common data foundation for NG Nordic’s continued development as a data-driven organization. By bringing data together on Databricks and governing it through Unity Catalog, NG Nordic is creating a more consistent, discoverable and traceable environment for reporting, analytics, and data-driven decision-making.

Building on this foundation, NG Nordic is creating better conditions for advanced analytics and AI. The organization has already started using Databricks Genie, creating an early opportunity for users to explore governed data through natural-language questions.

Building towards practical uses of AI

The next phase will focus on completing the remaining migrations, strengthening governance, and identifying where advanced analytics and AI can support NG Nordic’s operations and circular business. As the platform develops, the combination of consolidated data, stronger governance and improved processing performance can make it easier to identify and scale relevant AI use cases. The ambition is not to introduce AI for its own sake, but to enable NG Nordic to adopt relevant capabilities when clear business opportunities arise.