Better Data Infrastructure
How Thorn Technologies Upgraded a Semiconductor Analytics Platform
// About the customer
Semiconductor Analytics Provider + SFTP Gateway
A fast-growing semiconductor analytics company serving major chip manufacturers worldwide faced critical challenges managing test data from global fabrication partners. Their creative but unsustainable workaround, using Google Drive to simulate SFTP functionality, prevented them from signing enterprise customers and caused operational chaos.
Thorn Technologies implemented SFTP Gateway on Google Cloud, transforming their makeshift file transfer system into an enterprise-grade data pipeline that can handle 100GB+ files from 50+ test houses globally. This transformation enabled SOC 2 certification, reduced support tickets, and helped drive customer growth while maintaining the simplicity that made their platform successful.
// problem
The problem
This innovative semiconductor analytics company helps chip manufacturers optimize yields and predict quality trends by daily processing terabytes of wafer test data. It also works with global fabrication facilities to identify production issues that could impact millions of dollars in silicon inventory.
However, before partnering with Thorn Technologies, they faced several critical challenges that threatened their ability to scale and serve enterprise customers:
01
Creative but Unsustainable Infrastructure
The attempt to use Google Drive as a pseudo-SFTP, while initially clever, backfired. This makeshift solution created massive operational issues because it lacked proper SFTP support, access controls, and audit trails, confusing partners who required standard protocols.
02
Local Processing Bottlenecks
All analytics processing occurred on local servers, creating severe bottlenecks as data volumes grew from gigabytes to terabytes daily. The company faced an impossible choice: invest millions in on-premises infrastructure or find a cloud solution that could scale with demand.
03
Failed File Transfers
Semiconductor test files routinely exceed several gigabytes, and Google Drive’s web interface consistently failed with large uploads. Test houses reported high failure rates, requiring manual retries and delaying critical yield analysis that could cost manufacturers money.
04
Complex Partner Permissions
Their ecosystem required sophisticated access controls: test houses needed write-only access to upload, customers needed read-only access to download, and the analytics team needed global access. Google Drive’s permission model couldn’t handle these requirements, forcing manual interventions and creating security vulnerabilities.
Major semiconductor companies demanded features Google Drive couldn’t provide: SOC 2 compliance, centralized logging, audit trails, SLAs, and proper encryption key management. Without these capabilities, the company lost multiple seven-figure contracts to competitors with professional infrastructure.
Recognizing that their makeshift solution was constraining growth and damaging credibility, they sought a partner who could professionalize their file transfer operations without sacrificing simplicity
// Solution
The Solution
Thorn Technologies worked closely with the analytics company to implement a comprehensive solution that transformed their infrastructure while preserving what made their platform special:
// Results
The Results
The transition from makeshift workarounds to a professional infrastructure delivered immediate and transformative business impacts. This move radically accelerated partner onboarding from days to mere minutes. Operationally, the new system was a game-changer, drastically reducing support tickets and increasing data transfer reliability. The platform could now effortlessly process massive files that previously failed, while delivering analytics results in a fraction of the time.
Beyond efficiency gains, the upgrade yielded cost savings, enabled rapid SOC 2 compliance, and scaled to support dozens of partners globally. This robust infrastructure has since become a key competitive differentiator.
// team
The Team
Based in the Washington-Baltimore region, Thorn Technologies specializes in developing cloud file transfer software products for organizations around the globe. Thorn Tech clients include Fortune 500 companies spanning multiple industries, such as marketing, data analytics, fintech, retail, healthcare, data storage, and cloud security.
Thorn Tech products include SFTP Gateway, a simple, secure, scalable way to give SFTP users access to cloud storage locations and StorageLink, a web-based file transfer product, allowing users to move files to your private cloud storage locations from a web browser using a simple drag-and-drop interface.
