Introducing Dataddo Headless—A Headless Data Integration Platform

We at Dataddo are proud to announce that we have recently launched a headless version of our data integration platform: Dataddo Headless. It is intended for integration-heavy use cases and allows companies to completely free their engineers from constant changes to the APIs of cloud apps, scalability issues, and service-specific implementation challenges.

The single API that Dataddo provides drastically reduces the time to market for any data products built on top of it.

What Is Headless Data Integration?

Every product whose aim is to offer insights from data has some kind of integration capabilities under a hood (a body), which can be accessed through a user interface (a head).

These products (data products) can be divided into two broad categories: external data products and internal data products. External data products are products that are made available to the general public, such as customer data platforms (CDPs) or platforms that provide marketing insights. Internal data products, on the other hand, are products that are developed for and used to provide insights to a company's internal teams only.

Usually, the interfaces of these products are built by the same people or companies that author the integration capabilities. When someone needs to access these capabilities and extract data from various sources, they do it manually via the interface.

This arrangement is perfectly fine for lighter integration workloads. But heavier workloads need to be performed by a machine. Enter headless data integration.

Remember that the core aim of these products is to generate insights, not to build and maintain integrations. It is therefore much easier for their makers to rebuild the interface (the head) on top of an external, unified API (the body), so that all heavy integration workloads are machine-automated. 

It’s not that there is no head in headless data integration, it’s that the head and body are separate entities, and that any number of heads (data products) can be built on top of a single body (API).

Such modularity makes data products much more powerful and flexible, and gives their makers more time to focus on their core task: bringing value to customers, faster.

From Content Management Systems to Data Integration Platforms

Headless platforms already have a considerable presence on the market, but primarily in the content management space. In their simplest form, headless content management systems (CMSs) are backend-only content management systems. They provide the infrastructure for managing content, but do not include any frontend components such as templating systems or WYSIWYG editors.

Headless CMS platforms are often used in conjunction with Javascript frameworks like React or Angular to build single-page applications. This approach gives developers complete control over the frontend UI/UX, while still allowing them to leverage the CMS to manage content. 

Though headless systems are very new in the data integration space, they operate on the same principle as headless CMSs.

Loosely Coupled Architecture

The complexity of data products is best enabled by a loosely coupled API architecture, wherein individual components are independent, yet can work together. Each component (such as that for extraction, writing, or other data transfer operations) has a well-defined interface, and can therefore be swapped out or added without the need to make changes to the other components. This allows for maximum flexibility and scalability.

API-First Approach

The most challenging part of data integration is implementing and maintaining the API interfaces of various business tools and other data-providing systems. For this reason, integrating with a single API as opposed to dozens has very clear and straightforward benefits.

One of these benefits is that, with a single API, developers only have to create one set of code, which can then be reused across multiple applications. Naturally, this speeds up the development of any new applications.

Another is that it helps to ensure consistency. When different data applications share the same API, they are far more likely to work together seamlessly.

When Should ETL/ELT and Data Integration Be Made Headless?

If your organization builds and maintains data products, whether internal or external, now is the time to consider adoption of a headless data integration platform.

Data integration Isn't the Core Competency of Engineering Teams

Makers of data products usually incur great engineering costs associated with the development and maintenance of integrations. This is a great waste of resources given that the core competency of engineering teams is centered around providing insights from data rather than integrations.

Why Use Dataddo Headless?

Dataddo Headless offers a single API integration point that completely removes all underlying integration complexities and enables engineers to bring their data products to market faster. It's an answer to the initial challenge of building integrations, as well as the larger, ongoing challenge of maintaining them.

Save Engineering Resources

In a world where the number of SaaS apps is growing by the day, the pressure on engineers to maintain data integrations and understand the specifics of each API service will only intensify. Keeping up with API changes, healing broken pipelines, scaling, etc.—all of this can be left to our team.

Faster Time to Market (Or Time to Consumers)

Developing integrations on your own can take months upon months. With Dataddo Headless, you can build one integration to get them all, significantly reducing the time to market for external data products or time to consumers for internal data products.

Drum-Tight Security

Dataddo is SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001 certified, so you can rest assured that your data is secure. We have strict security policies in place to protect your data, and our team is always up-to-date on the latest compliance requirements.

Infinite Scalability

As your data product grows in popularity, you will need to scale up your infrastructure to accommodate increased workloads. If done in-house, this can be a costly and time-consuming process. With Dataddo Headless, you can increase the number of API calls infinitely without having to worry about provisioning more servers or increasing your bandwidth.