DIY: Putting Data Integration Into the Hands of Business Users

The web is abuzz with the concept of do-it-yourself (DIY) data management, with countless articles and blogs discussing how manual coding and disparate open source tools fragment the data integration process, inhibiting free movement of data across organizations and adding complexity to the talk of integrating all data within the organization’s main system.

All of this attention has given the concept a bad name.  At Astera, when we think of DIY, we think of a complex task made easy enough for the intended audience to be successful.  Think of putting together a table you’ve ordered over the Internet or picked up at Ikea.  That, to our minds, is what DIY data management should be – preconfigured so that it can be completed by the data analyst.

It’s true, data integration is no easy task, with increasing volumes of complex data coming into the enterprise in myriad formats from a plethora of sources that must be integrated into a central system. Our competitors’ software is difficult to understand and use, and complex hierarchical data is often integrated through hand coding that must be done by programmers.

Therefore, data integration has historically been the domain of IT professionals. In today’s fast-paced business environment, however, businesses are beginning to recognize that business analysts and those who make business decisions should be developing data integration processes to meet their guidelines rather than handing off to developers whose expertise is in perfecting systems but not in how the data from the systems is used. See our blog post, Business Users, The Future of Data Integration.

Fortunately, with Centerprise, data integration solutions are available to address the need for easy-to-use solutions that can be leveraged by business users as well as developers.

With Centerprise, we’re not talking about DIY data management in the sense of homegrown data integration put together with a hodgepodge of tools, we’re talking about one simple solution built for the business users themselves.

Centerprise provides an intuitive, drag-and-drop environment that enables non-developers to quickly and easily parse and construct hierarchical structures and manage their complex integration jobs faster and more affordably. Centerprise’s approachable data integration interface significantly lowers the need for IT resources and empowers those who use the data to have a say in how it is processed.

With Centerprise, business users can take control of their data management and free up IT to focus on other technology issues throughout the enterprise. By putting data integration into the hands of business users, they can be more responsive to customers and partners and complete tasks faster than ever before.