Analyst Perspectives

ISG recently published the 2025 ISG Buyers Guides for DataOps, providing an assessment of 51 software providers offering products used by data engineers, data scientists, and data and AI professionals to facilitate the use of data for analytics and AI needs. The DataOps Buyers Guide research generated three reports and five quadrants assessing providers in relation to overall DataOps, Data...

I recently wrote about the evolving requirements for operational data platforms to support artificial intelligence (AI) workloads. Operational data platforms providers are rapidly updating their products, driven by the development of intelligent applications infused with contextually relevant recommendations, predictions and forecasting that are in turn driven by machine learning (ML), generative...

Agentic AI is moving from pilots to production systems that execute work across enterprise applications, data platforms and business processes. As I’ve argued before, the value of AI is realized in action, not just answers, and enterprises are investing accordingly. One of the key questions now is how to coordinate the actions among different agents. My colleague Matt Aslett’s perspective on...

It’s clear that the contact center industry is experiencing a generational technological transformation. The effects of artificial intelligence (AI) and the automation it delivers have been extraordinary. But this isn’t the first time something like this has happened. People with long memories can recall the disruptive effects of CTI, for example, which enabled screen pops and integration of...

A little over two years ago, I observed that the pendulum of fashion in the data management sector was swinging away from multiple best-of-breed tools and toward consolidated platforms. Enterprise software portfolios take time to evolve, but the trend toward consolidation has clearly been evident in the product strategies of large data management providers since then. Many providers have combined...

Spectacular accounting frauds happen with enough regularity to beg the question, how did the auditors miss that? In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the U.S. established the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB or “peekaboo”) with the aim of protecting investors and lenders by overseeing the audits of public companies to ensure the reports and opinions are accurate, independent...

Revenue leaders face a defining moment, which is why the time to define capabilities is now. As organizations brace for economic uncertainty, margin pressure and board scrutiny, the long-promised ROI of go-to-market technology is under intense evaluation. Sales productivity is declining, seller attrition is rising and CFOs are no longer tolerating technology bloat without measurable performance...

Enterprise IT leaders face a dual mandate: maintain resilient operations while accelerating digital outcomes. AIOps software, where artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) models and automation converge across observability, incident response and IT service management, has moved from experimental pilots to foundational capabilities in today’s operations. As CIOs, CISOs and IT leaders...

Managing corporate income taxes effectively is important since these represent the second or third biggest expense for many enterprises. However attractive minimizing them might be, following all applicable tax laws and regulations is equally as important because failure to pay what the laws require can result in significant monetary fines and, potentially, reputational risk. Since there can be...

Cloudera recently hosted its EVOLVE25 event in New York, introducing updates that reinforce its commitment to open data architectures and hybrid data management. The announcements centered on a unified platform across cloud and on-premises deployments. Cloudera also announced the Iceberg REST Catalog and Cloudera Lakehouse Optimizer, both of which extend the provider’s ability to manage and share...

Sales performance management (SPM) is undergoing a reinvention. Once viewed as a back-office, compliance-oriented process largely owned by finance, it is now becoming a strategic platform at the heart of modern revenue operations. The rise of artificial intelligence (AI), particularly machine learning (ML), generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), and predictive modeling, is transforming how...