Resolving Data Silos with No-Code: Building a Data Integration Foundation

Hoshino Resorts seamlessly integrated their accounting software with Kintone and Tableau using Asteria, achieving in-house development with zero engineers. Facing global expansion and new accounting standards, they needed to integrate overseas accounting software with local systems and Tableau for BI. Asteria enabled rapid development (1/10 the cost of scratch development), high maintainability for changing specifications, and empowered non-IT staff to manage system integration despite a lack of infrastructure engineers.

CyberAgent integrated data from various services into their cloud DWH Snowflake using Asteria, reducing engineer development effort by 90%. Previously, a team of 10 engineers took six months to build data transfer tools. Asteria reduced this to 1/10, standardized management methods by centralizing them in Asteria, and eliminated key-person dependency by visualizing designs with a GUI, improving efficiency and reducing the cost of ongoing maintenance and new service integration.

The presentation concludes by emphasizing the benefits of no-code data integration tools like Asteria for promoting data utilization, enabling non-IT personnel to develop systems, and providing flexible integration with diverse systems. Asteria also runs 'No-Code Gate,' a free portal site offering over 50 video learning contents to support no-code skill acquisition and reskilling.

Asteria Co., Ltd. is a business software manufacturer that focuses on providing 'no-code' solutions to connect systems. Their flagship product, Asteria, is the number one data integration tool in market share, and they also offer other no-code products like Handbook X, Plaid, and Gravio.

Data utilization involves four phases: preparation, data collection, analysis, and verification. While analysis often receives the most attention, accurate data collection and processing are crucial as incorrect data will lead to flawed analysis and outputs. Data collection is broken down into data acquisition and data processing, emphasizing the need to gather and format data correctly for effective analysis.

A significant challenge in data utilization is data silos, where different systems and services within a company operate independently. This fragmentation makes data collection difficult due to diverse integration points and interfaces. Manual data collection leads to increased workload, human errors, and time lags, while custom-built solutions can become black boxes, increase development and maintenance costs, and reduce system flexibility.

Data integration tools offer a solution by providing flexible connections to various data sources and enabling speedy data processing. The use of data integration tools can shorten the data integration development process. Building a data integration platform with such tools helps visualize mechanisms, reduce development and maintenance costs, and enhance system flexibility. The challenge of who builds this platform can be addressed by a no-code approach.

A major challenge in promoting DX (Digital Transformation) is the shortage of IT talent and digital literacy. No-code solutions enable non-IT personnel to build systems, addressing these skill gaps. No-code allows for system development without writing code, enabling quick system deployment by selecting and configuring components. This contrasts with coding, which requires programming knowledge and significant time for skill acquisition.

Asteria is a no-code data integration tool designed to automate business processes and facilitate data utilization. It connects to over 100 services and systems and allows for ultra-fast development through simple icon-based operations and parameter settings. Asteria boasts over 10,000 implementations and has held the top market share for 18 consecutive years, capturing 56.9% of the domestic data integration tool market.

Asteria's development environment offers a user-friendly interface. A demonstration shows how to create a data flow by dragging and dropping components (DBGet for data acquisition, Mapper for transformation, FilePut for output, and End). The demo illustrates connecting to a database, configuring data settings using an SQL Builder, mapping data fields, and performing data transformations with various functions, eventually generating a CSV file. This process is entirely no-code and significantly more efficient than traditional programming.

Asteria dramatically improves development productivity compared to traditional programming, reducing development time and costs. Its visual interface enhances maintainability and reduces dependency on individual developers. Asteria also offers various development support features, including automatic specification generation, sub-flow processing, debugging tools, SQL Builder for automated query generation, and version control integration with tools like Git.

Asteria supports both batch processing (scheduled execution) and real-time processing (triggered by URLs or webhooks). This flexibility allows for diverse integration scenarios. Additionally, Asteria provides over 100 flow templates, enabling users to automatically generate integration flows by simply inputting necessary information, further boosting development efficiency.

Asteria supports integration with over 100 data services, including various databases, file formats, Web APIs (REST), cloud storage, BI, ERP, and other business systems. It can be utilized in numerous scenarios such as a data integration platform (ETL), master data management (MDM), data linkage platform (EAI, ESB), and business process automation (RPA).