Data-driven enterprises, e-commerce growth, and the adoption of server-less alternatives are some recent trends affecting the market for ETL tools. Streamlined workflows are also among the latest trends influencing the market for ETL tools. However, what is the need for these tools? How do you choose the best ETL tools or solutions for your organization? This article will explore the importance of ETL tools and their benefits.
Data-driven enterprises
In a data-driven enterprise, the ETL process is key to extracting data from different sources. The tool extracts data from different sources clean it and harmonizes it. It also removes duplicates and sorts them into relevant categories. Once the data has been processed and cleaned, it can be loaded into the target location, such as a database or business intelligence tool.
ETL tools come in many forms, including batch, streaming, and CDC. The benefits of each type of tool vary widely. Those supporting two kinds of pipelines should understand their differences and choose a tool that best serves the organization’s needs. The breadth of ETL tools has rapidly increased in recent years as organizations have embraced data lakes and warehousing technologies. Today, an array of ETL tools is available, allowing organizations to choose the right one for the data-driven enterprise.
The rapid growth of the e-commerce industry
The e-commerce industry is an emerging field. It started in 1995 with the launch of eBay and Amazon, allowing users to shop for various products and services. Just like eBay later acquired these websites, which caused the industry’s rapid growth to slow down a bit. But despite the slowdown, e-commerce companies are still growing and gaining market share. Here are some of the reasons behind this rapid growth.
One of the biggest reasons for the e-commerce industry’s rapid growth is the rise of the digital structure of the business. The pandemic has accelerated the evolution of companies through the Internet. It has given rise to new businesses and industries, largely due to e-commerce. Moreover, new technologies are allowing organizations to collect consumer data and provide a more personalized experience for customers. Moreover, the recent coronavirus outbreak has boosted e-commerce activity by giving it an additional boost. According to a report by eMarketer.com, the US e-commerce industry is projected to grow by 15.7% this year, up from $360 million in 2015.
Increasing adoption of server-less options
While early server-less platforms were largely targeted at the ETL market, developers soon realized the potential of serverless architecture. These platforms were designed to run simple ETL workloads and legacy web applications on a server-less model, resulting in greater developer productivity. The following are three benefits of server-less ETL tool adoption. 1. Lower costs compared to dedicated hosting. Serverless options also offer better control over costs.
ETL tools are primarily used to gather data from multiple sources, which may vary in type, volume, and reliability. For example, target data stores can include databases, warehouses, and lakes. Data loaders identify and copy data from multiple sources and transport it to the target datastore. Data can come from various sources, including structured and unstructured data. Structured sources include documents and emails, while unstructured data sources include equipment, business applications, and databases.
Streamlined workflows
Streamlined workflows with ETL data integration tools help you integrate multiple data sources into a single repository. They help you share data between different teams and provide a holistic view of your business’ performance and progress toward its goals. ETL tools come in different forms and are generally categorized by the infrastructure and organization that supports them and the type of data they store. A typical ETL process involves collecting and refining different data types and delivering them to a data lake or warehouse.
In business, it takes days or weeks to calculate a business unit’s performance. A manual process requires employees to sift through massive data sets to produce a single report. These time and expense expenditures drastically reduce the value of the report. However, a data integration tool can quickly perform these calculations and deliver results in minutes instead of weeks. The key to achieving data integration success is automation. Workflows help companies automate data processes and minimize manual work.
Cost-effectiveness
The cost-effectiveness of ETL tools depends on several factors, including a budget, level of automation, and data integrity. For example, an automation tool is an effective choice if the data is processed in real-time. However, manually transforming data is inefficient and requires additional resources and time, which are not always affordable. Alternatively, an ETL tool can be a cost-effective option if the data is processed internally and subsequently accessed by several different applications.
One of the highest costs of ETL tools is the cost of intermediate storage. Data storage costs can add up quickly if data volumes continue to increase. This is especially true with cloud-based tools. ETL tools are typically priced in the hundreds of dollars per gigabyte. However, these costs may still increase significantly. That’s why organizations must be able to scale them up quickly. A few companies have found that these tools help them achieve that scale and reduce costs.