Analyst Perspectives

As enterprises seek to expand and accelerate the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) many are finding that longstanding analytics and data challenges are a barrier to success. As was explained in ISG’s State of Generative AI Market Report, AI requires data that is clean, well-organized and compliant with regulatory standards. The need for good data management is by no means new, but the expectations and demands associated with AI are a forcing function for enterprises to take long-overdue steps to improve data and analytics processes. This is encouraging some enterprises to reconsider the smorgasbord of providers used across their data and analytics estate, which is good news for software providers such as Domo that offer platforms that transcend traditionally separate product categories. 

Domo was founded in 2010 by chief executive officer Josh James, who was previously founder and CEO of web analytics provider Omniture and saw an opportunity to create a business intelligence platform designed to better enable CEOs and other senior executives to access enterprise data, rather than relying on reports and dashboards created for them by data and analytics specialists. Enabling self-service BI has long been a goal of many enterprises but few have succeeded in delivering it. Only 15% of participants in ISG’s Research Analytics and Data Benchmark Research stated that their organization is very comfortable allowing business users to work with data that has not been integrated or prepared for them by IT. Having expanded on its original vision, Domo now provides a platform for self-service BI and AI that also addresses data integration, data processing and data governance. Application development is also a key capability, with Domo offering professional and low-code development capabilities, and an Appstore of pre-built applications addressing key requirements for business departments including marketing, finance, sales and IT. Domo claims more than 2,600 customers and reported fiscal 2024 revenue of $319.0 million, up 3% on the previous year. Revenue for fiscal 2025 is expected to be in the range of $315.5 million to $316.5 million. The company was rated as Exemplary in ISG Research’s 2024 Analytics and Data Buyers Guide, as well as the associated Buyers Guides for Collaborative Analytics, Embedded Analytics, GenAI Analytics and Mobile Analytics.  

Domo is best known as a provider of software for BI and analytics, thanks to its functionality for visualization, reporting, data science and embedded analytics. The company is particularly differentiated by its Buzz functionality that enables collaboration by teams and individuals across an enterprise. In addition to supporting the creation of collaborative dashboards and reports that can be accessed on a self-service basis on desktop and mobile devices, Domo also enables the incorporation and automation of data science and machine learning, including integration with the Jupyter notebook environment and native functionality for MLOps to create, deploy and monitor AI/ML models. I assert that by 2027, three-quarters of all data processes will use AI and ML to accelerate the realization of value from the data. The company’s Domo.AI capabilities facilitate data analysis with natural language query, guided analysis and data preparation and integration assistance. At the company’s 2024 Domopalooza customer event Domo announced the general availability of AI Model Management to facilitate the use of external AI models from the likes of OpenAI, Databricks, AWS and Hugging Face, as well as the ResponsibleGPT App, which is designed to enable users to access ChatGPT, Gemini or other GenAI chat services without exposing sensitive information.  

In addition to BI and AI functionality, the company’s Data Experience Platform provides a broad range of capabilities that includes governance and security, data integration and application development. Domo’s App Creation Tools include the low-code App Studio development environment as well as the App Dev Framework, which is designed for experienced coders. Both enable the development of applications based on data governed and managed using Domo and provide integration with Domo Workflows, a no-code tool that enables line-of-business workers to integrate data, orchestrate user actions and automate business processes. Domo App Studio was announced as generally available during Domopalooza 2024, while the company also enhanced Domo Workflows with the ability for users to create their own functions for accessing third-party data sources and APIs. Domo’s native data integration functionality differentiates the company from many of its BI rivals. It boasts over 1,000 pre-built data connectors, as well as functionality for data preparation and transformation, federated queries, query acceleration, data writeback, data orchestration and data lineage. In June 2024 the company announced the launch of Domo Integration Suite, which includes Domo’s Magic ETL tool for developing extract, transform and load data integration pipelines as well as Cloud Amplifier, which provides integration with cloud data sources including AWS’s Amazon Redshift, Databricks, Google BigQuery and Snowflake.   

Domo’s continued investment in AI capabilities enables users to leverage the power of AI to increase the value that can be derived from data and complements the breadth and depth of the Data Experience Platform. Enterprises aiming to streamline data processes using cloud-based BI should consider Domo, especially those looking to enable or enhance collaboration, as well as those exploring options to consolidate data and analytics providers. While Domo offers integration with external data sources—including bi-directional integration which has long been missing from BI software—its combination of BI and AI functionality with data integration, data processing, data governance and application development may enable enterprise to rationalize data and analytics providers while improving operations and automating processes. 

Regards,

Matt Aslett