SaaS Sessions · 2026-02-03 · 45 min
Real-time analytics at a petabyte scale isn't just a technical challenge; it's a business survival requirement. Catherine Johnson, VP of Global Solutions Engineering at Hydrolix, joins the show to deconstruct the "impossible" architecture required to power the 2025 Super Bowl broadcast for Fox Sports. From managing 1.4 petabytes of daily log data to the brutal reality of why traditional auto-scaling fails during mission-critical events, Catherine reveals the strategic framework behind being a "Truth Teller" in the high-stakes world of Solutions Engineering. Key Takeaways 1. Data Architecture as a Competitive Moat - Normalization is Non-Negotiable: At a petabyte scale, you cannot afford "dirty" data. Success requires normalizing disparate CDN logs - matching units (ms vs. s) and handling recursive URL encoding - into a single, queryable schema. - Indexing vs. Regex: Computational intensity kills performance. Strategic indexing for exact matches must replace regular expressions for high-frequency queries to avoid massive, costly table scans.
S10E2 - From Harvard Law to SaaS CEO: Decoding the "Paperless" Future ft Shashank Bijapur, Spotdraft65 / 100
S9E8 - Unified Commerce & AI ft. Jigar Dafda, CPTO at Fynd
S9E7 - From Clicks to Conversations ft. Tom Drummond, Founder & Managing Director at Heavybit Industries
S9E6 - The Future of Intelligent Agents in SaaS ft. Bhaskar Roy, Chief of AI Products and Solutions at Workato
S9E5 - Building AI Into SaaS the Right Way: Lessons from Megh Gautam, Former CPO at Crunchbase