Menu

IoT FEATURE NEWS

Why Automated ETL Isn't ETL at All

By

As the number of SaaS applications ascends ever upward, so too has the desire to integrate the cloud data nested within them. SaaS data is rich with insights about customers. The trick is how to unify the data, so it can be fed into reports, analytics, and business intelligence (BI) tools where you can use it to draw valuable insights.


Since the 1970s, businesses have used ETL (extract, transform and load) technology as a first step towards moving data between systems. Most IT professionals consider ETL complex and time-consuming — more turtle than hare. Half a century later, ETL has evolved to the extent that it’s finally stood upright, morphed into a far more advanced species.

This “new ETL” automates the process of data ingestion, preparation, and storage. At the click of a button, anyone can have all their SaaS application data unified, and a cloud data warehouse built to feed their analytics, reports, & dashboards.

Undergirding this evolution is a true revolution in real-time analytics — historically difficult to achieve. With automated ETL, businesses can finally combine data sources and trust their accuracy. Developers are free from having to write code that extracts data from applications via APIs. And IT teams that have had to manually standardize data formats and learn how multiple data models relate to one another, no longer have to.

For decades, these roadblocks have either stalled analytics projects or postponed them indefinitely. Now businesses can analyze customer records instantly, since system relationships may now be automatically mapped, matched, modeled, and merged into a single database. That 80% of analytics projects is spent on data ingestion and prep could very soon become a stat of the past.

What does all this mean for the SaaS software & IoT spaces?
The rise in devices has also produced more data sources. Customers engage with businesses through multiple channels, often simultaneously. One day a customer might visit your website on desktop, the next on their iPad. After they file a support software, they might talk about their experience with customer service on Twitter.

With an automated ETL approach, making use of all this data — regardless of origin — is no longer a multi-day, -week, or -month project. Every activity, event, deal, and opportunity — also called “objects” — can be automatically combined within a simple UI. It’s also possible to customize relationships, or mappings, between said objects. Customer data, once seen as an analytical non sequitur, now coheres, bestowing businesses with a more holistic understanding of user behaviors and preferences.

Modern ETL also builds a data warehouse that connects easily to reports, analytics, and BI tools. For developers, it’s a relief just to have a unified schema of SaaS data. For analysts, transforming many data sets into one is just shy of a miracle, since data is in near real-time. Executives getting ready for a board meeting can report their top KPI and refresh dashboards, assured that data is up-to-date, not weeks old.

According to a survey of 502 IT professionals, traditional ETL has long undermined organizations’ ability to achieve real-time analytics. Once moved via ETL, data is at least five days old by the time it reached an analytics database. These delays also grow as data sets do. The more data there is to process, the more time IT must exert on each step, transformation especially. These are just some of the obvious reasons why so many IT professionals are on the hunt for better alternatives.

One of the chief advantages of automated ETL is speed. As the number of data sources added increases, the time it takes to unify and warehouse is relatively unaffected when compared to non-automated antecedents.

Although predictions about new technology tend to err quickly, at play are two parallel trends which reflect the same intrinsic demand — the need to do more faster, and with fewer resources. At the office, SaaS has quenched our thirst for higher productivity. At home, the IoT era has engineered a spate of gadgets which renders home and daily life more convenient.

In light of these truths, we should expect traditional ETL to fade, leaving room for a superior solution, one whose automation so radically outpaces the current one that it isn’t ETL at all.

About the author: Taylor Barstow is CEO & Co-Founder of Bedrock Data. He is a technology innovator who has a proven track record as both a developer and an engineering executive.




Edited by Ken Briodagh
Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. [Free eNews Subscription]


SHARE THIS ARTICLE
Related Articles

Rising Edge Computing Investments to Reach $350B by 2027, According to IDC

By: Alex Passett    3/27/2024

Worldwide spending on edge computing is expected to surge (and then keep going) for the foreseeable future, according to the International Data Corpor…

Read More

ZEDEDA Adds Lisa Edwards as New Board Member, Seeks Opportunities to Strengthen Operations and Scale

By: Alex Passett    3/26/2024

Earlier this morning, ZEDEDA announced the addition of Lisa Edwards to its board of directors.

Read More

An Existing IoT Collab, Emboldened: Digi International and Telit Cinterion Transform Solutions with 5G RedCap Integration

By: Alex Passett    3/25/2024

The ongoing industry collaboration between Digi International and Telit Cinterion signals strong support for the mainstream showcasing of 5G for IoT a…

Read More

Telit Cinterion's 5G LGA Modules, Powered by Snapdragon from Qualcomm, to Create a Big Leap in IoT Connectivity

By: Alex Passett    3/25/2024

Telit Cinterion recently unveiled its FE990B34/40 LGA family of modules, powered by the Snapdragon X72 5G Modem-RF System from Qualcomm Technologies, …

Read More

Embracing Innovation in Mining: The Role of Network-Aware Applications in the Digital Transformation

By: Special Guest    3/21/2024

Shabodi leverages private 5G network capabilities and enables the development of network-aware applications to enhance operational efficiency, automat…

Read More