Why ETL Needs Open Source to Address the Long Tail of Integrations

Over the past year, interviews with over 200 companies revealed that data integration remains a challenge in 2021. Many users of ETL technology still build and maintain their own connectors despite using an ETL solution. The primary reasons for this are incomplete connector coverage, significant friction around database replication, and the inability to cover all connector needs. Open-source solutions have emerged as a potential solution to these problems by providing customization capabilities, addressing the long tail of connectors, enabling broader integrations with data tools and workflows, offering debugging autonomy, and ensuring out-of-the-box security and privacy compliance. However, the barrier to entry for creating robust and full-featured connectors remains high. To address this issue, Airbyte has developed an open-source Connector Development Kit (CDK) that automates much of the connector development process, reducing implementation time from 2 days to 2 hours. The CDK is designed with onion layers of abstraction to maximize productivity and enable building robust connectors within a short period.