What Data Integration Maturity Level Are You? - No-Code Serverless or Code-First
- Steph Locke
- Archive
- August 10, 2021
- Updated:
Table of Contents
Data integration is a key component to data-driven decision making. The data you use can come from many different sources, but it’s important to know what data integration maturity level you’re on. Depending on where you are in your data integration maturity, the adoption of no-code serverless data integrations or embracing code first solutions may be right for your needs.
Historically, we’ve seen a lot of data integration performed with no-code solutions. These enable a significant number of “non-technical” people to be able to integrate data and relatively quickly. Nowadays we have a broader range of no-code tools that can make it even easier. The critical factor that makes them more scalable is that they integrate with capabilities to deliver software more effectively. This combination makes no code data integration a must for many businesses.
For high volume or high variety data sources, the code-first approach is great as it allows you to loop or process data with custom connections. This makes it useful for integrating data from IoT sources. Code solutions are typically easier to test and have more verifiable security than no-code solutions so they can be a good choice if your needs require this scalability and control.
For newcomers to data integration, no-code is a great starting point for quick results. If you have a lot of legacy data integration or need to scale quickly, then code-first may suit your needs better. Mix and match the two approaches where they both do well, using each one where it has merits.
FAQs
Why does data integration maturity matter for manufacturers?
Data integration — connecting the different systems in a manufacturing business so that data flows between them without manual re-entry — is foundational to everything else in digital manufacturing. A production management system that cannot receive data from the ERP, an inventory system that cannot see what the purchasing system has ordered, a quality system that cannot access production data — these are all integration failures that create manual work, delays, and errors.
Most manufacturers have a data integration problem, even if they do not describe it in those terms. The symptom is staff spending time extracting data from one system and entering it into another. The root cause is that the systems were not designed to work together — or were bought at different times, from different vendors, and connected (if at all) through bespoke integrations that are fragile and hard to maintain.
What are the three levels of integration maturity?
Understanding where a business sits on the no-code, serverless, and code-first spectrum is useful for planning the next step in integration maturity — not for judging where a business ‘should’ be. A small manufacturer with simple data flows and a small IT team may get everything it needs from no-code integration tools. A larger manufacturer with complex, high-volume data flows may need code-first integration for performance and reliability reasons.
The right approach depends on the volume and complexity of the data flows, the internal technical capability available to build and maintain integration, the budget available for integration tools and development, and the rate at which the integration requirements are likely to change.
