At MetaRouter, we’ve seen the customer data landscape evolve rapidly over the past several years. One thing is becoming increasingly clear: The industry is now at a pivotal juncture, as represented by the soaring popularity of the term customer data infrastructure, or CDI. But let’s cut through the buzzwords and focus on what really matters. 

Customer data platforms (CDPs) have historically helped businesses by unifying customer data from multiple sources into a single, accessible platform. This allowed marketing, sales, and service teams to create personalized experiences, improve customer engagement, and drive targeted campaigns. CDPs provided a solution to the fragmented data landscape, giving businesses a clearer view of their customers.

However, some call CDIs the next (critical) party of the puzzle because they go beyond combining data, focusing on the underlying infrastructure needed to ensure that data is high-quality, secure, and compliant. CDIs offer more flexibility, extensibility, and control over data flows, making them ideal for enterprises that need robust, real-time data management and customization. This shift addresses the growing complexity of managing customer data across different platforms and ensuring compliance with privacy regulations.

The question isn't whether CDI is the next CDP — the question isn’t even why CDIs have gained such sudden popularity — but rather, whether your organization is ready for the future of customer data management.

Why CDI Matters Now

The customer data management landscape is rapidly evolving, with many marketers now adopting tools like CDPs and customer engagement platforms (CMPs) to keep pace. However, this approach has been somewhat backward. While the ability to activate customer data is undeniably valuable — especially with the surge of data from new channels — serious and high-risk gaps remain. These gaps have emerged because the foundational aspects of customer data management were often overlooked or deprioritized (sometimes indefinitely). Many organizations rushed to leverage increasing data (cough cough…like AI) before fully understanding the volume, quality, and compliance requirements needed to power these advanced technologies effectively.

The TL;DR here is that the evolution of CDPs has brought tremendous value to organizations, but to address foundational gaps like data quality, compliance, and control, the concept of a CDI)is emerging as a critical part of the customer data management “puzzle.”

• CDP (as defined by the CDP Institute): A packaged software that creates a persistent, unified customer database accessible to other systems.
• CDI Definition: The technology that ensures the proper collection, transformation, and governance of customer data across systems, providing a secure and compliant foundation for driving insights and actions.

Recently, we’ve observed a massive surge in companies like Snowplow and mParticle positioning themselves as CDIs. This shift isn’t happening in a vacuum. There are two primary reasons why CDI is gaining momentum now:

1. Maturity:  Companies are maturing in their data strategies, but it's been a slow progression. For example, customer data strategies historically could not handle real-time activation. They were limited by slow data routing, often coming from data warehouses, that required extensive engineering resources and long implementation times to execute real-time use cases. Today, advancements in technology allow companies to achieve real-time data activation and predictive analytics, enabling faster, more cost-effective implementations that can be set up quickly.
2. Market Demand: There’s a growing market need for the unique solutions a CDI can provide, particularly in areas like data fragmentation across platforms, historical (and often blind) reliance on third-parties for tracking, increasing data privacy regulations such as ADPR, regional requirements enforcing where data is processed (e.g., the Uber fiasco), and real-time processing needs.

Let’s be clear—CDI isn’t a new concept to us at MetaRouter. While Segment was the “OG” and originally coined the term CDI about nine years ago, we’ve spent the past six years laser-focused on building the foundation of a robust CDI platform, starting with a hyperfocus on behavioral event data. 

While others are just beginning to explore this space, we’ve spent years documenting the challenges many companies face with other tools they are exploring. For example, our CDP partners have historically faced challenges with anonymous user identification. Many also struggle with event loss due to ad blockers and browser restrictions. These gaps hinder a brand's ability to fully leverage customer data for personalization and growth.

Our goal is to work with and seamlessly accelerate the performance of tech tools like CDPs so that brands can harness richer, more accurate data for better decision-making. In the process, we’re working to unlock more personalized experiences by empowering clients with more and better customer data.

Despite the industry hype, we understand that what enterprises truly need is a sustainable pathway to an effective and meaningful customer data strategy. And this isn’t just about adopting a tool — it’s about evolving your entire approach to customer data.

What to Look for In Building a Foundation for an Effective CDI Evolution

Starting with web-based behavior data

We are deeply focused on understanding (and solving for) how people are actually using customer data, not just moving the data around. So to truly evolve your customer data strategy into what CDI could be, it’s essential to think about five key focus areas:

1. Server-Side Data Collection: Despite the evolving landscape of data privacy, third-party cookies aren’t completely disappearing, and cross-site tracking still holds significant value. Moving to server-side data delivery allows you to future-proof your data strategy while reaping the benefits of enhanced security, performance, and control over your data flows. To lay the foundation for a robust data infrastructure, you HAVE to get collection right.
2. Single Point of Collection and Distribution: Once your server-side infrastructure is in place, the next step is to centralize your data collection and distribution. This stage is crucial for scalability and flexibility. You need a solution that not only scales but also offers the ability to syndicate data across various tools and platforms — beyond simply sending events to walled gardens. The goal here is to ensure that all your tools are populated with the same set of high-quality data, giving you full control over how that data is generated, normalized, and routed. For example, if you’re collecting "add to cart" events from multiple sources, MetaRouter ensures that this data is consistent, accurate, and ready for real-time insights and seamless integration across your ecosystem.
3. Real-Time Data Integration: Integration is key to leveraging the full potential of your customer data. At this stage, you need to ensure that your data is not only compatible but also seamlessly integrated across all your vendors and tools. This includes syncing vendor IDs and conducting cross-domain identity synchronization. MetaRouter’s infrastructure enables this by calling clusters for IDs that are shared across your domains, allowing for consistent and enriched data streams. This stage ensures that your data is actionable in real time, supporting advanced use cases like audience segmentation.
4. Data Validation and Schema Enforcement: As your data flows through the system, maintaining its data privacy and compliance is paramount. MetaRouter provides robust tools for data validation and schema enforcement, ensuring that your data streams are high-quality, structured as expected, and free from unexpected fields. By allowing you to see, set, test, and adjust schemas, we ensure that your data remains consistent, accurate, and compatible across all platforms and destinations. This level of control not only enhances data quality but also streamlines integration and strengthens data protection across your systems.
5. Ensuring Total Compliance: The fifth stage in this evolution is about governance and compliance. It’s not enough to have a powerful data infrastructure — you also need to ensure that your data complies with both internal policies and external regulations. MetaRouter allows you to centralize your data on a single platform, deployed in your private cloud, returning control over your data’s security and privacy. Data governance and compliance are enforced at the point of data ingestion, meaning that vendors only receive data that has been approved and is compliant with user consent. This stage ensures that your data management strategy not only meets regulatory requirements but also aligns with your organization’s governance standards.

MetaRouter: An Essential Element of Your CDI Strategy

MetaRouter has been focused so far on ensuring that your user-generated data has the most seamless, compliant, and efficient pathway into your digital ecosystem.  Our platform provides centralized control over data flows, enabling you to direct, transform, and enforce compliance before data reaches external vendors. Here’s how:

• Private Cloud, Single-Tenant, Self-Hosted (Optional): We offer more flexibility, with the option to host our platform within your existing cloud environment to meet even the most stringent infosec requirements.
• Schema-Agnostic: No need to retag your site or redefine analytics schemas. We work with the data you’re already collecting, giving you the power to define your schemas and maintain total control.
• Total Compliance Enforcement: Unlike other solutions, we enforce data privacy and compliance before your vendors even see the data, aligning with both internal policies and external regulations. 
• Data Sovereignty Deployments: As regulations around data sovereignty tighten, our platform allows you to deploy clusters in every region, ensuring compliance and data security.

CDI is an Evolution, Not a Revolution

The concept of CDI is more than just a trend — it’s the next logical step in the evolution of customer data management. But this evolution requires more than just adopting new tools; it requires a strategic approach that integrates infrastructure, data quality, and compliance into a seamless whole. And while many companies are trying to jump from point A to point C, the reality is that you can’t skip stage B — an evolution in your customer data strategy that MetaRouter is uniquely equipped to support.

MetaRouter has been at the forefront of this evolution for six years, and we’re just getting started. From creating the first server-side identity enrichment module, unlocking complete integration flexibility with parameter-by-parameter customizations, and hooking into consent management platforms for guaranteed GDPR/CCPA compliance, we’ve been there from the beginning — all with a very specific focus on first-party user generated data. We believe that a true CDI isn’t something you can achieve overnight — it’s a journey that requires careful planning, robust infrastructure, and a deep understanding of your business’s unique needs. But it all starts with better customer data collection.