Open Source: why no code and low code are not worth the bother

In the early months, researching the best solution to the challenge as we saw it, we quickly realised that code vs no-code was the main battleground and you had to pick a side.  

With our founder, Aaron’s 20 years+ of experience in software development, the future of technology has been a huge consideration in our platform design.  We know from our research that the main obstacle to change is getting all the pieces to work together.  Good looks effortless. When it doesn’t work it is the coding that gets the blame.

Why we are all about open coding

No code solutions promote reassurance if you’re not technical, but offer limited solutions.  Low code implies a minimal amount of coding to set up a customised workspace but again, not flexible enough.  You invest in it, sometimes a lot of money, and quickly realise you still don’t have what you need.

No code/ low code doesn’t address the wider data issues out there:  how to best use your data and how to make it robust and reliable. 

So our unique approach is a platform that will work end to end for any user immediately that they sign up but opens up into a full-code solution if you want to take it there.  You don’t need a developer, but if you use one, they will be delighted that we have already done the upfront work.  Developers feedback on our platform is that they are impressed with the approach, so we know we are heading in the right direction.

Put simply, we have built a framework that anyone can access and immediately use. But if they want to tweak a part to better suit their needs, they can.

Open Source programming is happening right now in the most forward-thinking of software companies.  We see companies building a product that specialises in their strengths and then collaborating with other companies who have complementary products: customers building a customer journey themselves.  Collaboration has never been better in software development: the willingness of developers to share, release, feedback and work with each other is positive and exciting. 

Take DBT and Meltano, for example, two major ETL tools that we are using  

DBT started as a consultancy but quickly found the tool they had built was the real winner and pivoted to focus on that (specialisation). While not part of the traditional set of ETL tools that come to mind (because transformation is the focus, as opposed to extraction and loading) – their analytics-as-software approach is 100% on-brand for us.

We saw their potential and have been using them from the start.    And we weren’t the only ones as last week they announced a $150M investment.  Congratulations to them, we can’t wait to see what they do next.  

Meltano is the other hero in our ETL tools toolbox.  Meltano has bundled a solution with DBT and created a perfect pairing for moving and organising data – an open-source extract, load, transform solution.  This week they also raised $4.2m.  Congratulations to them too – well deserved we say.

Using Meltano, DBT and our own cloud and analytics technologies and ETL tools, we’re launching complete data collaboration solutions for Google Analytics and Solarvista later this month.  Other Saas apps will follow in quick succession. 

Here’s something you should really care about:  Open Source software and ETL tools will save you millions

This is the big promise of open source, but one of the reasons the data market looks so patchy at the moment is that it is really difficult to build a really good end to end solution. 

Luckily we like a challenge.  

Solutions that exist right now are mainly built in house in large companies, are expensive and often disappointing. It might be possible to pull parts of data from the business together, but real-time and automatic analytics can be tricky. 

Matatika is working at the cutting edge of what is possible.  We’re trying to solve the problems that you have today in reading, responding and acting on your organisational level data. We are working in the Facilities Management industry to solve real problems as we build.  Right now, we provide a great end-to-end solution if you would like full control without building a system from scratch.  Soon, we will be able to deliver non-coders insights in minutes.  

So if you have internal developers, point them in the direction of our Developer Series of videos to explain the tech in more detail.  We would be delighted to give them a demo of what we are doing.

For more information on ETL Tools, see our in-depth piece: Ultimate Guide to ETL Tools for Modern Business Intelligence.

Or if you’re interested in seeing what we can do for your business as an overview, get in touch. Or follow our socials for when we launch our Insights in Minutes app.