No disruption: Modernizing the analytics behind Dutch real estate

Almost everyone buying or selling a home in the Netherlands relies on Brainbay – often without realizing it. A subsidiary of NVM, the country’s largest trade association for real estate brokers, valuers and specialists, Brainbay manages listings and transaction data, safeguards data quality and builds tools that turn market activity into usable insights for NVM members. The result is the Netherlands’ most comprehensive residential real estate dataset, with records dating back to 1985.

Every time a member checks residential or commercial listings, prepares comparisons for buyers or analyzes market trends, Brainbay is at work behind the scenes. Because this data underpins the Dutch housing market, it also informs national policymaking – so its reliability, accuracy and availability are essential.

Making the move to SAS Viya 4 – without sacrificing continuity

After running part of its data and analytics operations on SAS Viya 3.4 for years, Brainbay recognized it was time to upgrade to SAS Viya 4, ensuring continued support while unlocking new capabilities it couldn’t previously access.  

Maintaining continuity and reliability during the transition was a top priority. With so many stakeholders across the Netherlands depending on the organization for a steady stream of reliable data, the migration needed to be carefully planned to ensure applications would remain available and performance would stay consistent throughout the transition.

“We knew this would be a significant upgrade,” says Britt Smeets, Product Owner for Data at Brainbay. “It was important to us to approach the migration thoughtfully and make sure everything was done right.”

Brainbay works with an ecosystem of specialized partners, activating the best expertise for each challenge. For the migration to SAS Viya 4 the team turned to Notilyze, due to its proven track record guiding organizations through SAS Viya upgrades and strong working relationship with Brainbay. Notilyze also operates its own cloud environment, supporting more than 60 customers worldwide. 

Once Brainbay selected Notilyze, the teams quickly aligned on the migration path and set the transition into motion. 

More than a migration: communication and coordination

With SAS Viya as the foundation and Notilyze leading execution, the teams focused on minimizing disruption for the thousands of real estate professionals who rely on the platform. Notilyze followed a phased approach – first migrating to SAS Viya 3.5, then to SAS Viya 4 – and also transitioning the environment to Notilyze Cloud.

Both Brainbay and Notilyze knew the upgrade wouldn’t succeed on technology alone. The change also required coordination across teams and clear communication with everyone who depended on the data.

“There was the tech part, which we knew was going to be challenging because we were on a really old version of Viya,” Smeets says. “But then there’s also everything around it – so many teams involved, so many opinions and so on. So we had to master the ‘soft’ skills, too.”

Notilyze ran a series of working sessions with Brainbay to gather input, address concerns and show what the new environment would make possible.

“We found that Brainbay users worked very cautiously within the existing Viya environment,” says Eric Mathura, Director of Business Development for Notilyze. “Once they saw the new possibilities that would open up with the migration, they got on board quickly.”

Stability first. Innovation next.

Initially, the upgrade goal was simple: stability and continued support – not a rapid expansion of capabilities. Simply making the transition without disrupting service to thousands of real estate professionals would be a win – and Notilyze delivered. Throughout the project, users saw no interruption in access to Brainbay-managed data. By completing the migration with no disruption to users, Brainbay gained a stable, cloud-native foundation for continued innovation on SAS Viya.

The payoff: new features and improvements

“Our team is ready to explore what’s now possible with SAS Visual Analytics on Viya,” Smeets says. “With a more flexible platform, we can easily access and integrate data from many different systems. That opens the door to more advanced dashboards and insights – helping real estate professionals make better decisions.”