Matt Aslett's Analyst Perspectives

Ventana Research recently published the 2023 Analytic Data Platforms Value Index. As organizations strive to be more data-driven, increasing reliance on data as a fundamental factor in business decision-making, the importance of the analytic data platform has never been greater. In this post, I’ll share some of my observations about how the analytic data platforms market is evolving.

I am happy to share insights from our latest Ventana Research Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements. The 2023 Operational Data Platforms Value Index is the distillation of a year of market and product research by Ventana Research. Drawing on our Benchmark Research, we apply a structured methodology built on evaluation categories that reflect real-world criteria incorporated in a request for proposal to data platform vendors supporting the...

Ventana Research recently announced its 2023 Market Agenda for Data, continuing the guidance we have offered for two decades to help organizations derive optimal value and improve business outcomes.

I am happy to share insights from our latest Ventana Research Value Index, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements. The 2023 Data Platforms Value Index is the distillation of a year of market and product research by Ventana Research. Drawing on our Benchmark Research, we apply a structured methodology built on evaluation categories that reflect real-world criteria incorporated in a request for proposal to data platform vendors that support the spectrum of...

Data observability is a hot topic and trend. I have written about the importance of data observability for ensuring healthy data pipelines, and have covered multiple vendors with data observability capabilities, offered both as standalone and part of a larger data engineering system. Data observability software provides an environment that takes advantage of machine learning and DataOps to automate the monitoring of data quality and reliability. The term has been adopted by multiple vendors...

Having recently completed the 2023 Data Platforms Value Index, I want to share some of my observations about how the market is evolving. Although this is our inaugural assessment of the market for data platforms, the sector is mature and products from many of the vendors we assess can be used to effectively support operational and analytic use cases.

When joining Ventana Research, I noted that the need to be more data-driven has become a mantra among large and small organizations alike. Data-driven organizations stand to gain competitive advantage, responding faster to worker and customer demands for more innovative, data-rich applications and personalized experiences. Being data-driven is clearly something to aspire to. However, it is also a somewhat vague concept without clear definition. We know data-driven organizations when we see them...

I recently wrote about the growing range of use cases for which NoSQL databases can be considered, given increased breadth and depth of functionality available from providers of the various non-relational data platforms. As I noted, one category of NoSQL databases — graph databases — are inherently suitable for use cases that rely on relationships, such as social media, fraud detection and recommendation engines, since the graph data model represents the entities and values and also the...

I previously described the concept of hydroanalytic data platforms, which combine the structured data processing and analytics acceleration capabilities associated with data warehousing with the low-cost and multi-structured data storage advantages of the data lake. One of the key enablers of this approach is interactive SQL query engine functionality, which facilitates the use of existing business intelligence (BI) and data science tools to analyze data in data lakes. Interactive SQL query...

As I recently described, it is anticipated that the majority of database workloads will continue to be served by specialist data platforms targeting operational and analytic workloads, albeit with growing demand for hybrid data processing use-cases and functionality. Specialist operational and analytic data platforms have historically been the since preferred option, but there have always been general-purpose databases that could be used for both analytic and operational workloads, with tuning...