A Customer Data Infrastructure (CDI) solution equips organizations with prebuilt data connectors to efficiently gather data from various point solutions and route this data to requisite systems. Essentially, CDIs serve as a data pipeline, facilitating the movement of data from one system to another. Initially developed on the technical side—primarily to reduce the necessity for custom-built APIs—CDIs gradually integrate into business processes. While they offer limited data storage capabilities, it’s important to note that CDIs are not substitutes for a CDP (Customer Data Platform).

Martand Singhal believes that CDIs represent the future of data management. For insights on the key distinctions between Reverse ETL and ELT, see: Differences to (Reverse)ELT.

Arpit Choudhury frequently publishes extensive analyses on this topic.

Origin: Arpit Choudhury
References: Data Engineering
Created 2022-06-18