Ep 9 - Bottlenecks to Breakthroughs: How Covetrus Solved Latency with Streaming

For enterprises managing sprawling systems and frequent M&A activity, data latency isn’t just inconvenient—it’s a blocker to business value. In this episode, Joe Pardi, Senior Director of Global Data Engineering at Covetrus, explains how his team replaced fragile data pipelines with a robust real-time data streaming architecture that enables instant decisions  across the entire enterprise.

The Covetrus team started with open source Apache Kafka® and then shifted to Confluent Cloud for scalability and data governance.  Joe shares the adoption has drastically reduced operational overhead, strengthened data governance, and supercharged innovation. He also emphasizes the strategic importance of data integration in post-merger scenarios and how real-time data streaming helps uncover and address data quality issues early on.

You’ll learn:

• Why Covetrus moved from self-managed Kafka to Confluent Cloud
• How real-time data streaming helps detect data quality issues faster
• What are the requirements for scaling a data architecture across hundreds of engineers
• How data streaming supports M&A integration and value creation

Whether you’re centralizing data across silos or enabling downstream systems with real-time feeds, this conversation offers a blueprint for building data streaming platforms that scale.

About the Guest:
Joe Pardi is the Senior Director of Global Data Engineering at Covetrus, a leading provider in the veterinary services industry. Based in Portland, Maine, he has held this role since January 2021, where he leads data engineering initiatives to support Covetrus' global operations.

Guest Highlight: 
“The whole key with that acquisition strategy is to unlock the value. It's easy to make an acquisition go from 1+1=2, but you're really trying to make 1+1=3… If you're going to do an M&A, you have to get really good at integrating data.”

Episode Timestamps: 
*(05:10) - Covetrus’ Data Streaming Strategy
*(06:40) - Data Challenges: Latency and Quality
*(26:05) -   The Runbook: Tools & Tactics
*(31:15) -   Data Streaming Street Cred: Improve Data Streaming Adoption 
*(38:25) - Quick Bytes
*(42:15) - Joseph’s Top 3 Takeaways

Dive Deeper into Data Streaming:

• EP1—Stream On: Unleashing Innovation with Data Streaming | Life Is But A Stream
• EP2—Processing Without Pause: Continuous Stream Processing and Apache Flink® | Life Is But A Stream
• EP3—The Connective Tissue: Shift Left to turn Data Chaos to Clarity | Life Is But A Stream

Links & Resources:

• Connect with Joseph: @thedatagiant
• Joseph’s LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/thedatagiant
• Joe’s LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/joepardi
• Learn more at Confluent.io

Our Sponsor:  
Your data shouldn’t be a problem to manage. It should be your superpower. The Confluent data streaming platform transforms organizations with trustworthy, real-time data that seamlessly spans your entire environment and powers innovation across every use case. Create smarter, deploy faster, and maximize efficiency with a true data streaming platform from the pioneers in data streaming. Learn more at confluent.io.