Data integration (DI) has seen minimal automation over the past decade despite many technology advances. Most companies still hand‐code data integration between applications (operational data integration) using techniques that would be familiar to a programmer from the 1980s. In business intelligence 40% of the Extract Transform and Load, or ETL, processes are still hand‐coded.

Open source data integration tools can provide the cost advantages of hand‐coding with the productivity advantages of traditional data integration software. They are established in the developer tools market which has been the traditional stronghold of open source software. Expect open source to be a key component of data integration (and especially of operational data integration) in the near future, similar to the way it is a key component of application development environments today.