Item: Astera Centerprise
Rating: 9
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Historically we have built a number of integrations and small tasks manually through various languages and processes - having to track what we used, who built it, and what server it's running on. Astera Centerprise has been a breakthrough in this regard in a few ways. The first is that it required almost no training to use. I have given someone a 15-minute demo and left feeling confident they could do simple processes with it moving forward. The drag and drop GUI is generally very intuitive and while nothing is perfect, I rarely am fighting against it. The second is there is a wealth of data connections and functions to use. When I talk to peers about this product, I just ask how they are moving data - any data. Do you have an excel sheet that someone updates that need to join its data to a database and from an API and then write these as a CSV file that you import with a PowerShell command? This is literally a task I built in a few hours in Astera Centerprise. If I need to interact with disparate data, Astera Centerprise is the tool I move to first today.

Pros and Cons

ETL, ELT - moving and integrating data
easy UX/Gui for interacting with the application
Installation and setup
Data Source Choices
Complex Transformations

Occasional Bugs
Documentation could be better, more clear
A premium priced product

Return on Investment

We were going to hire at least 2 FTEs but this purchase negated that need
Time to Completion on ETL/Data projects has dropped significantly

Alternatives Considered

SQL Server Integration Services, Talend Open Studio, Pentaho, Fivetran, Stitch, from Talend and Airbyte

The biggest difference is with Astera Centerprise I could just start using it. Almost every other tool required me to write SQL or in another language... and if I'm writing SQL already, why not just use SSIS or raw SQL? There wasn't a tremendous amount of time savings being seen with the other products in getting the work done and that was the primary reason to go with Astera Centerprise. I watched someone use it in a demo for 30 minutes and thought, "Ok, let me have it, I can use this right now."

Key Insights

Do you think Astera Centerprise delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Astera Centerprise's feature set?

Yes

Did Astera Centerprise live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Astera Centerprise go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Astera Centerprise again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Microsoft Visual Studio Code, Astera DW Builder, Google Workspace (formerly G Suite), Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (formerly Dynamics NAV), Ceridian Dayforce

Likelihood to Recommend

You have to pick 2 of 3 - Good, Fast, Cheap - Astera Centerprise is Good and Fast. If you have a smaller team, need low administrative burdens, and need something that doesn't require a big learning effort Astera Centerprise is a fantastic fit for these situations. It's a tool that even non-technical people could use to build ETL pipelines and do so well. If you use a number of disparate data sources, Astera Centerprise shines but holds its own even if you are moving data around like to like or even on the same server with its pushdown capabilities. I think if you had a strong need to have a large group work on your ETL, you could do it with Astera Centerprise, there are source controls available, but they aren't very robust, and keeping track of versions, what's deployed, what's changed is not as tight as it could be.

Astera Centerprise a solid centerpiece of your data stack

Overall Satisfaction with Astera Centerprise