Analyst Perspectives

I previously wrote about the potential for rapid adoption of the data lakehouse concept as enterprises combined the benefits of data lakes based on low-cost cloud object storage with the structured data processing functionality normally associated with data warehousing. By layering support for table formats, metadata management and transactional updates and deletes as well as query engine and...

Many organizations have adopted DataOps to apply agile development, DevOps and lean manufacturing processes to the development, testing, deployment and orchestration of data integration and processing pipelines. The most likely ultimate outcome of these pipelines is the analytics reports and dashboards enterprises rely on to make business decisions.

Analytics software is used by business analysts and decision-makers to facilitate the generation of insights from data. It encompasses business intelligence and decision intelligence software, including reports and dashboards as well as embedded analytics and the development of intelligent applications infused with the results of analytic processes. Analytics software enables enterprises to...

I recently wrote about the development, testing and deployment of data pipelines as a fundamental accelerator of data-driven strategies. As I explained in the 2023 Data Orchestration Buyers Guide, today’s analytics environments require agile data pipelines that can traverse multiple data-processing locations and evolve with business needs.

I previously explained how master data management helps provide trust in data, making it one of the most significant aspects of an enterprise’s strategic approach to data management. More recently, I discussed how it has a role to play in accelerating data democratization as part of data intelligence initiatives. Along with data quality, MDM enables organizations to ensure data is accurate,...

I wrote recently about the role that data intelligence has in enabling enterprises to facilitate data democratization and the delivery of data as a product. Data intelligence provides a holistic view of how, when, and why data is produced and consumed across an enterprise, and by whom. This information can be used by data teams toensure business users and data analysts are provided with self...

The development, testing and deployment of data pipelines is a fundamental accelerator of data-driven strategies, enabling enterprises to extract data from the operational applications and data platforms designed to run the business and load, integrate and transform it into the analytic data platforms and tools used to analyze the business. As I explained in our recent Data Pipelines Buyers Guide...

As enterprises seek to increase data-driven decision-making, many are investing in strategic data democratization initiatives to provide business users and data analysts with self-service access to data across the enterprise. Such access has long been a goal of many enterprises, but few have achieved it. Only 15% of participants in Ventana Research’s Analytics and Data Benchmark Research say...

Cloud computing has had an enormous impact on the analytics and data industry in recent decades, with the on-demand provisioning of computational resources providing new opportunities for enterprises to lower costs and increase efficiency. Two-thirds of participants in Ventana Research’s Data Lakes Dynamic Insightsresearch are using a cloud-based environment as the primary data platform for...

It is well known that data integration, transformation and preparation represent a significant proportion of the time and effort required in any analytics project. Traditionally, operational data platforms are designed to store, manage, and process data to support worker-, customer- and partner-facing operational applications, and data is then extracted, transformed, and loaded (or “ETLed”) into...

I have previously written about the impact of intelligent operational applications on the requirements for data platforms. Intelligent applications are used to run the business but also deliver personalization, recommendations and other features generated by machine learning and artificial intelligence. As such, they require a combination of operational and analytic processing functionality. The...

The increasing importance of intelligent operational applications driven by artificial intelligence (AI) is blurring the lines that have traditionally divided the requirements between operational and analytic data platforms. Operational data platforms have traditionally been deployed to support applications targeted at business users and decision-makers to run the business, with analytic data...

I have previously written about the functional evolution and emerging use cases for NoSQL databases, a category of non-relational databases that first emerged 15 or so years ago and are now well established as potential alternatives to relational databases. NoSQL is a term used to describe a variety of databases that fall into four primary functional categories: key-value stores, wide-column...

In recent years, many enterprises have migrated data platform workloads from on-premises infrastructure to cloud environments, attracted by the promised benefits of greater agility and lower costs. The scale of cloud data platform adoption is illustrated by Ventana Research’s Data Lakes Dynamic Insights research: For two-thirds (66%) of participants, the primary data platform used for analytics...

Ventana Research recently announced its 2024 Market Agenda for Analytics and Data, continuing the guidance we have offered for two decades to help enterprises derive optimal value and improve business outcomes.

Discussion about potential deployment locations for analytics and data workloads is often based on the assumption that, for enterprise workloads, there is a binary choice between on-premises data centers and public cloud. However, the low-latency performance or sovereignty characteristics of a significant and growing proportion of workloads make them better suited to data and analytics processing...

As articulated in Ventana Research’s Data Platforms Buyer’s Guide and DataOps Buyer’s Guide research, the combination of cloud computing and advanced analytics has lowered the cost of storing and processing large volumes of data, accelerating the emergence of new data platform and data operations products that enable organizations to gain operational efficiency and competitive advantage. The...

The phrase ‘big data’ may have largely gone out of fashion, but the concept of storing and processing all relevant data continues to be important for enterprises seeking to be more data-driven. Doing so requires analytic data platforms capable of storing and processing data in multiple formats and data models. This will be an important focus for the forthcoming Data Platforms Buyer’s Guide 2024. 

I recently discussed how fashion has a surprisingly significant role to play in the data market as various architectural approaches to data storage and processing take turns enjoying a phase in the limelight. Pendulum swing is a theory of fashion that describes the periodic movement of trends between two extremes, such as short and long hemlines or skinny and baggy/flared trousers. Pendulum swing...

I previously described how Oracle had positioned its database portfolio to address any and all data platform requirements. The caveat to that statement at the time was that any organization wanting to take advantage of the company’s flagship Oracle Autonomous Database could only do so using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) cloud computing service, their own datacenter or a hybrid cloud...