Executive Summary

Data Management

Data management combines functionality addressing data governance, data quality, master data management, data integration and data intelligence to ensure that the enterprise is collecting, storing and processing data in accordance with strategic goals and regulatory requirements.

Data management has been a critical component of enterprise IT strategies for decades, used to ensure that data is clean, well-organized and compliant with regulatory requirements.

ISG defines data management as the administration of data throughout its lifecycle, from generation to consumption, enabling users to ensure that data is valid and consistent and can be trusted for operational use cases and analytic decision-making.

Data management has been a critical component of enterprise IT strategies for decades, used to ensure that data is clean, well-organized and compliant with regulatory requirements. The elevated expectations and demands associated with artificial intelligence (AI) are a forcing function for enterprises to take long-overdue steps to improve data management, however.

Data is integral to AI. Large volumes of data are required to train models, while data freshness is important to inferencing in interactive applications and data quality is fundamental to ensuring that the output of agentic and generative AI initiatives can be relied upon. Poor data management can, therefore, be an impediment to success with AI. While AI-ready data is clean, well-organized and compliant with regulatory standards, too many enterprises find themselves struggling with data that is fragmented, inconsistent and not easily accessible.

More than one-half (54%) of participants in ISG’s 2025 Market Lens Data and AI Program Study cited the usability of data for AI applications as a significant data challenge. As such, even if enterprises have proven the value of AI with small-scale initiatives, many have identified the need to take one step back by pausing to improve data management with a view to subsequently taking two steps forward with accelerated strategic AI initiatives.

Data integration is a set of processes and technologies that enable enterprises to extract, combine, transform and process data from multiple internal and external data platforms and applications to maximize the value of analytic and operational use. Without data integration, business data would be trapped in the applications and systems in which it was generated. Analysis of individual data sources—customer or product data, for example—can provide insights to improve operational efficiency. However, the combination of data from multiple sources enables enterprises to innovate, improving customer experience and revenue generation, for example, by targeting the most lucrative customers with offers to adopt the latest product.

Data governance enables organizations to ensure data is cataloged, trusted and protected, improving business processes that accelerate analytics initiatives while supporting compliance with data privacy and security policies as well as regulatory requirements. While not all data governance initiatives are driven by regulatory compliance, the risk of falling afoul of privacy (and human rights) laws ensures that regulatory compliance influences data-processing requirements and all data governance projects. Good data governance provides guardrails that enable enterprises to act quickly while protecting the business from risks related to regulatory requirements, data-quality issues and data-reliability concerns.

Maintaining data quality and trust is a perennial data-management challenge, often preventing enterprises from operating at the speed of business. As enterprises aspire to be more data-driven, trust in the data used to make decisions becomes more critical. Without data quality processes and tools, enterprises may make decisions based on old, incomplete, incorrect or poorly organized data. The precise measure of quality will depend on the individual use case, but important characteristics include accuracy, completeness, consistency, timeliness and validity.

Maintaining data quality and trust is a perennial data-management challenge, often preventing enterprises from operating at the speed of business.

Creating a “single version of the truth” that provides an agreed definition of customers, products, suppliers or workers is a perpetual challenge for many enterprises. MDM is the practice of establishing and protecting foundational reference data used by an enterprise to provide an agreed list of entities that can be shared throughout the organization. MDM encompasses data validation, matching and merging duplicate records and enriching data with related information, as well as data modeling, which documents the relationships between data elements.

Data intelligence provides a holistic view of data production and consumption, enabling data administrators to understand and manage the use of data in business intelligence (BI) and AI initiatives and accelerate strategic data-democratization initiatives to provide data analysts and business users with governed self-service access to data across an enterprise. Data intelligence platforms provide a combination of data inventory, data discovery and metadata management functionality, as well as data governance, data quality and data lineage to ensure that business users and data analysts can find and access the data they need. Analytics and data leaders benefit from key metrics on data production and consumption, including the value generated by data projects. I assert that through 2027, enterprises will prioritize data intelligence software providers capable of providing a holistic view of data production and data consumption across their organization.

Our Data Management Buyers Guide provides a holistic view of a software provider’s ability to deliver the combination of functionality that provides the complete scope of data management with either a single product or suite of products. As such, the Data Management Buyers Guide includes the full breadth of data management functionality. Our assessment also considered whether the functionality in question was available in a single offering or as a suite of products or cloud services.

The ISG Buyers Guide™ for Data Management evaluates software providers and products in key areas, including data governance, data intelligence, data quality, master data management and data integration. To be considered for inclusion in the Data Platforms Buyers Guide, a product must be marketed as a data management platform or address at least three of the following functional areas: data governance, data intelligence, data quality, master data management and data integration.

This research evaluates the following software providers that offer products that address key elements of data management as we define it: Actian, Alation, Alibaba Cloud, Ataccama, AWS, Cloud Software Group, Collibra, Databricks, Experian, Google Cloud, Huawei Cloud, IBM, Informatica, Microsoft, Oracle, Pentaho, Precisely, Qlik, Quest, Reltio, Rocket Software, SAP, SAS Institute, Securiti, Snowflake, Syniti and Tencent Cloud.

Buyers Guide Overview

For over two decades, ISG Research has conducted market research in a spectrum of areas across business applications, tools and technologies. We have designed the Buyers Guide to provide a balanced perspective of software providers and products that is rooted in an understanding of the business requirements in any enterprise. Utilization of our research methodology and decades of experience enables our Buyers Guide to be an effective method to assess and select software providers and products. The findings of this research undertaking contribute to our comprehensive approach to rating software providers in a manner that is based on the assessments completed by an enterprise.

The ISG Buyers Guide™ for Data Management is the distillation of over a year of market and product research efforts. It is an assessment of how well software providers’ offerings address enterprises’ requirements for data management software. The index is structured to support a request for information (RFI) that could be used in the request for proposal (RFP) process by incorporating all criteria needed to evaluate, select, utilize and maintain relationships with software providers. An effective product and customer experience with a provider can ensure the best long-term relationship and value achieved from a resource and financial investment.

In this Buyers Guide, ISG Research evaluates the software in seven key categories that are weighted to reflect buyers’ needs based on our expertise and research. Five are product-experience related: Adaptability, Capability, Manageability, Reliability, and Usability. In addition, we consider two customer-experience categories: Validation, and Total Cost of Ownership/Return on Investment (TCO/ROI). To assess functionality, one of the components of Capability, we applied the ISG Research Value Index methodology and blueprint, which links the personas and processes for data management to an enterprise’s requirements.

The structure of the research reflects our understanding that the effective evaluation of software providers and products involves far more than just examining product features, potential revenue or customers generated from a provider’s marketing and sales efforts. We believe it is important to take a comprehensive, research-based approach, since making the wrong choice of data management technology can raise the total cost of ownership, lower the return on investment and hamper an enterprise’s ability to reach its full performance potential. In addition, this approach can reduce the project’s development and deployment time and eliminate the risk of relying on a short list of software providers that does not represent a best fit for your enterprise.

ISG Research believes that an objective review of software providers and products is a critical business strategy for the adoption and implementation of data management software and applications. An enterprise’s review should include a thorough analysis of both what is possible and what is relevant. We urge enterprises to do a thorough job of evaluating data management systems and tools and offer this Buyers Guide as both the results of our in-depth analysis of these providers and as an evaluation methodology.

Key Takeaways

Data management is being reshaped by AI and regulatory demands, moving beyond governance and quality to deliver trusted, AI-ready data at scale. Enterprises must overcome fragmented and inconsistent data to enable predictive, compliant and self-service use cases. Successful platforms unify lifecycle management, integration and intelligence to provide a single source of truth and fuel both innovation and operational reliability. As AI adoption accelerates, data management has become the foundation for achieving measurable value, ensuring compliance and building enterprise-wide trust in data.

Software Provider Summary

The research identifies Informatica, IBM and Oracle as the market leaders, with strengths across multiple categories. Providers such as Actian, Pentaho and Databricks also demonstrated targeted capabilities. Classification placed IBM, Informatica and Oracle in the Exemplary quadrant alongside providers including Google Cloud, Microsoft and SAP. Providers Alibaba Cloud and Qlik were categorized as Innovative; Alation, Collibra and Precisely as Assurance; and Ataccama, Experian, Quest and Rocket Software in the Merit quadrant. This segmentation helps assess which providers have the best commitment to customer needs.

Product Experience Insights

Product Experience accounted for 80% of the overall rating, with emphasis on capability, usability, reliability, adaptability and manageability. Informatica, IBM, and Oracle led in delivering breadth and depth across governance, integration and quality, while Pentaho and Databricks demonstrated strong adaptability but less overall balance. Leaders distinguished themselves with usability, reliability and scalability, ensuring platforms can support enterprise-wide data management while enabling AI-driven use cases.

Customer Experience Value

Customer Experience represented 20% of the evaluation, focused on validation and TCO/ROI. Databricks, Oracle and Informatica led in this category by demonstrating strong customer commitment, transparent ROI frameworks and consistent lifecycle support. IBM and Microsoft also performed well, though short of leadership. Lower-performing providers often lacked sufficient customer references or clarity in engagement, making it harder for enterprises to justify long-term investments.

Strategic Recommendations

Enterprises should treat data management platform selection as a strategic decision that balances foundational functions such as governance, quality and integration with expanded AI-driven capabilities in data intelligence and self-service. Buyers should prioritize platforms that ensure interoperability, simplify administration and deliver measurable ROI through transparent TCO frameworks. Using the ISG Buyers Guide as a structured framework enables enterprises to evaluate providers against both product and customer experience, ensuring investments that improve data trust, accelerate AI readiness and align with evolving regulatory and business requirements. 

How To Use This Buyers Guide

Evaluating Software Providers: The Process

We recommend using the Buyers Guide to assess and evaluate new or existing software providers for your enterprise. The market research can be used as an evaluation framework to establish a formal request for information from providers on products and customer experience and will shorten the cycle time when creating an RFI. The steps listed below provide a process that can facilitate best possible outcomes.

1. Define the business case and goals.
   Define the mission and business case for investment and the expected outcomes from your organizational and technology efforts. 
2. Specify the business needs.
   Defining the business requirements helps identify what specific capabilities are required with respect to people, processes, information and technology.
3. Assess the required roles and responsibilities.
   Identify the individuals required for success at every level of the organization from executives to front line workers and determine the needs of each. 
4. Outline the project’s critical path.

   What needs to be done, in what order and who will do it? This outline should make clear the prior dependencies at each step of the project plan. 
5. Ascertain the technology approach.

   Determine the business and technology approach that most closely aligns to your organization’s requirements. 
6. Establish technology vendor evaluation criteria.
   Utilize the product experience: Adaptability, Capability, Manageability, Reliability and Usability, and the customer experience in TCO/ROI and Validation. 
7. Evaluate and select the technology properly.

   Weight the categories in the technology evaluation criteria to reflect your organization’s priorities to determine the short list of vendors and products.
8. Establish the business initiative team to start the project.
   Identify who will lead the project and the members of the team needed to plan and execute it with timelines, priorities and resources. 

The Findings

>All of the products we evaluated are feature-rich, but not all the capabilities offered by a software provider are equally valuable to types of workers or support everything needed to manage products on a continuous basis. Moreover, the existence of too many capabilities may be a negative factor for an enterprise if it introduces unnecessary complexity. Nonetheless, you may decide that a larger number of features in the product is a plus, especially if some of them match your enterprise’s established practices or support an initiative that is driving the purchase of new software.

Factors beyond features and functions or software provider assessments may become a deciding factor. For example, an enterprise may face budget constraints such that the TCO evaluation can tip the balance to one provider or another. This is where the Value Index methodology and the appropriate category weighting can be applied to determine the best fit of software providers and products to your specific needs.

Overall Scoring of Software Providers Across Categories

The research finds Informatica atop the list, followed by IBM and Oracle. Providers that place in the top three of a category earn the designation of Leader. Oracle has done so in six categories; Databricks and Informatica in five; Google Cloud in two and Actian, IBM and Pentaho in one category.

The overall representation of the research below places the rating of the Product Experience and Customer Experience on the x and y axes, respectively, to provide a visual representation and classification of the software providers. Those providers whose Product Experience have a higher weighted performance to the axis in aggregate of the five product categories place farther to the right, while the performance and weighting for the two Customer Experience categories determines placement on the vertical axis. In short, software providers that place closer to the upper-right on this chart performed better than those closer to the lower-left.

The research places software providers into one of four overall categories: Assurance, Exemplary, Merit or Innovative. This representation classifies providers’ overall weighted performance.

Exemplary: The categorization and placement of software providers in Exemplary (upper right) represent those that performed the best in meeting the overall Product and Customer Experience requirements. The providers rated Exemplary are: Actian, AWS, Databricks, Google Cloud, IBM, Informatica, Microsoft, Oracle, Pentaho and SAP.

Innovative: The categorization and placement of software providers in Innovative (lower right) represent those that performed the best in meeting the overall Product Experience requirements but did not achieve the highest levels of requirements in Customer Experience. The providers rated Innovative are: Alibaba Cloud and Qlik.

Assurance: The categorization and placement of software providers in Assurance (upper left) represent those that achieved the highest levels in the overall Customer Experience requirements but did not achieve the highest levels of Product Experience. The providers rated Assurance are: Alation, Collibra and Precisely.

Merit: The categorization of software providers in Merit (lower left) represents those that did not surpass the thresholds for the Assurance, Exemplary or Innovative categories in Customer or Product Experience. The providers rated Merit are: Ataccama, Cloud Software Group, Experian, Huawei Cloud, Quest, Reltio, Securiti, SAS Institute, Rocket Software, Snowflake, Syniti and Tencent Cloud.

We warn that close provider placement proximity should not be taken to imply that the packages evaluated are functionally identical or equally well suited for use by every enterprise or for a specific process. Although there is a high degree of commonality in how enterprises handle data management, there are many idiosyncrasies and differences in how they do these functions that can make one software provider’s offering a better fit than another’s for a particular enterprise’s needs.

We advise enterprises to assess and evaluate software providers based on organizational requirements and use this research as a supplement to internal evaluation of a provider and products.

Product Experience

The process of researching products to address an enterprise’s needs should be comprehensive. Our Value Index methodology examines Product Experience and how it aligns with an enterprise’s lifecycle of onboarding, configuration, operations, usage and maintenance. Too often, software providers are not evaluated for the entirety of the product; instead, they are evaluated on market execution and vision of the future, which are flawed since they do not represent an enterprise’s requirements but how the provider operates. As more software providers orient to a complete product experience, evaluations will be more robust.

The research results in Product Experience are ranked at 80%, or four-fifths, of the overall rating using the specific underlying weighted category performance. Importance was placed on the categories as follows: Usability (12.5%), Capability (30%), Reliability (12.5%), Adaptability (12.5%) and Manageability (12.5%). This weighting impacted the resulting overall ratings in this research. Informatica, IBM and Oracle were designated Product Experience Leaders.

Adaptability of the Product

This category assesses the degree to which products and technology can be adapted to an enterprise’s specifications via configurability and customization while still maintaining integrity of integration across the worker, device, business, processes, application and data. Adaptability is also related to the ability to readily integrate with other internal and external systems—for example, integrate data and information securely across processes and systems—and support bidirectional data flows to support synchronization and migration. It also examines the investment by the software provider in resources and improvements.

The research weights Adaptability at 12.5% of the overall rating. Oracle, Informatica and Databricks are the Leaders in this category.

Adaptability is an essential evaluation metric as it determines the flexibility and interconnectivity of the software provider’s product related to enterprise requirements. It also enables enterprise software to operate across the variety of platforms and cloud computing environments that exist today and in the future.

Software providers that evaluated well in the Adaptability category understand the criticality of preparing and using information to optimize business execution. These providers meet the specific customization and integration support requirements in these areas, enabling enterprises to process data across business processes, workflows and applications as they operate.

Capability of the Product

The Capability criteria are designed to assess the products and features across a broad range of data management capabilities that support data intelligence, data governance, data quality, master data management and data integration.

ISG Research evaluated more than 290 different function points in 26 sections to assess the full scope of data management capabilities. It also examined the investment by the software provider in resources and improvements.

The research weights Capability at 30% of the overall rating. IBM, Informatica and Pentaho are the Leaders in this category.

The significant, in-depth Capability evaluation framework for data management provides a substantive challenge for many software providers. The research largely focuses on how providers apply data management and the specific processes where some specialize, such as data quality, and master data management. Software providers with more breadth and depth and that support the entire set of needs fared better. Providers specializing and offering a narrower set of capabilities did not perform as well. The varying levels of specialization and capabilities for business found across software providers give enterprises a significant choice in data management products.

Manageability of the Product

Manageability is evaluated by how well the products can be managed technologically and by business, and governed, secured, licensed and supported in a service level agreement (SLA). Also important is the flexibility of the privacy and security provisions built into the technology with respect to user identity, role and access, how effective that security is, to what extent it supports auditing and compliance, and what licensing or subscription is available from the software provider. It also examines the investment by the provider in resources and improvements.

The research weights Manageability at 12.5% of the overall rating. Databricks, Oracle and Actian are the Leaders in this category.

Manageability is an essential evaluation metric to indicate whether the software provider’s product can be administrated and supported throughout its lifecycle in the enterprise. It also ensures the overall efficiency, compliance and security of the enterprise software.

A software provider’s performance in the evaluation criteria is especially critical when examining business and technology administration. Providers that did not perform well had challenges with administration and configuration by authorized personnel. The significance of information security cannot be overstated as the insights and knowledge of an enterprise are present in the data. The growing importance of simplifying manageability is critical and should be a priority for all software provider evaluations.

Reliability of the Product

For data management processes to operate efficiently and for workers to engage the applications, the software on which they run must reliably deliver the necessary performance and scalability using the existing architecture operating across the enterprise and cloud computing environments. The criteria include depth in the performance and scalability of a software provider’s products and architecture, including the metrics to ensure operations and configurability across data, users, instances, activities and tasks. It also examines the investment by the provider in resources and improvements.

The research weights Reliability at 12.5% of the overall rating. Oracle, Informatica and Google Cloud are the Leaders in this category, providing the highest level of confidence for operation at any level of reliability 24 hours a day.

Reliability is an essential evaluation metric as it indicates the product’s ability to perform and scale to the defined enterprise requirements and how well it supports the continuous processing required for business continuity and operational resilience today and into the future.

Evaluating the performance and scalability readiness of software is not always easy as it depends on the type of computation and processing and the volume at which the data is being updated and used by processes and systems. Software providers that did not perform well in this category were not able to provide this level of information at any depth, even though it is necessary to establish the confidence required for provider selection.

Usability of the Product

Usability is necessary for meeting the varying business needs of executives, management, workers and analysts, along with IT and others involved in data management processes. Products are evaluated on the intelligence in the Usability across user experience, the use of AI and ML and adapting to the diverse competencies of an enterprise’s workers. Usability criteria also include the sophistication of the product’s support of mobile and web technologies, and the extent to which the product design enables its use by workers of varied skill levels, including conversational experiences using chat and voice. It also examines the investment by the software provider in resources and improvements.

The research weights Usability at 12.5% of the overall rating. Leaders in this category are Oracle, Databricks and Google Cloud.

Usability is an essential evaluation metric as it provides indicators as to whether the product can be utilized by designated workers within the enterprise. A demonstrated commitment by the software provider to the digital experience of its products is also key.

The importance of usability and the digital experience in software utilization has been increasing over the past decade as is evident in our market research. The requirements to meet the needs of a broad set of roles and responsibilities across an enterprise’s cohorts and personas should be a priority for all software providers. Many technological advancements in applying ML and natural language processing are available to provide a universal, intuitive experience of being able to hear, read and talk to systems.

Software providers that performed well in this category have fully embraced the value of usability as a critical element in product experience across all roles and have invested in areas that address user skills and challenges.

Customer Experience

The importance of a customer relationship with a software provider is essential to the actual success of the products and technology. The advancement of the Customer Experience and the entire lifecycle an enterprise has with its software provider is critical for ensuring satisfaction in working with that provider. Technology providers that have chief customer officers are more likely to have greater investments in the customer relationship and focus more on their success. These leaders also need to take responsibility for ensuring this commitment is made abundantly clear on the website and in the buying process and customer journey.

The research results in Customer Experience are ranked at 20%, or one-fifth, using the specific underlying weighted category performance as it relates to the framework of commitment and value to the software provider-customer relationship. The two evaluation categories are Validation (10%) and TCO/ROI (10%), which are weighted to represent their importance to the overall research.

The software providers that evaluated the highest overall in the aggregated and weighted Customer Experience categories are Databricks, Oracle and Informatica. These category leaders best communicate commitment and dedication to customer needs.

Software providers that did not perform well in this category were unable to provide sufficient customer case studies to demonstrate success or articulate their commitment to customer experience and an enterprise’s journey. The selection of a software provider means a continuous investment by the enterprise, so a holistic evaluation must include examination of how they support their customer experience.

TCO/ROI of the Software Provider

The TCO/ROI category applies evaluation criteria designed to assess how effective the software provider is in demonstrating the business case, including the product’s strategic value, total cost of ownership and total benefit of ownership. The criteria also include an evaluation of the tools and documentation it provides to enable customer evaluation of TCO and ROI, and what the software provider cites as its investment and services to support it. It also examines the investment by the provider in resources and improvements.

The research weights TCO/ROI at 10% of the overall rating. Databricks, Oracle and Informatica are Leaders in this category.

TCO/ROI is an essential evaluation metric when determining a software provider’s commitment to the customer experience and whether the costs associated with deployment and adoption of the provider's product align with its value. A provider should also demonstrate its ability to support an enterprise’s current and future goals.

Software providers that evaluated well in this category provided buyers and customers with the TCO/ROI-related support needed to effectively build the business case and get funding for investment. Those that did not struggled to make available the tools and documentation needed for enterprises to make a sound buying decision.

Validation of the Software Provider

The Validation category assesses the software provider’s ability to support a customer through the lifecycle of working with its products. It examines the provider’s commitment to the customer experience from leadership, processes and systems, and evaluates a software provider’s ability to assess its customer experience across front and back office and the marketing and communication of that experience. The viability of a software provider from financial growth, management and customer growth are evaluated, as are customer references and studies on the provider’s website and the use of feedback to improve the provider’s operations.

The Validation category also evaluates the customer journey across sales, onboarding, support, services and partners as well as examining the product releases and roadmap, and how the software provider utilizes formalized interactions with customers to improve products. Validation looks at the services, the support provided and the provider’s digital effectiveness to facilitate the customer relationship. It also examines the investment by the software provider in resources and improvements.

The research weights Validation at 10% of the overall rating. The Leaders here are Oracle, Databricks and Informatica.

Appendix: Software Provider Inclusion

For inclusion in the ISG Buyers Guide™ for Data Management in 2025, a software provider must be in good standing financially and ethically, have at least $75 million in annual or projected revenue verified using independent sources, sell products and provide support on at least two continents, and have at least 75 employees. The principal source of the relevant business unit’s revenue must be software-related, and there must have been at least one major software release in the past 12 months.

Data management is the administration of data throughout its lifecycle, from generation to consumption. Data management software combines data governance, data quality, master data management, data integration and data intelligence to ensure that the enterprise is collecting, storing and processing data in accordance with strategic goals and regulatory requirements.

To be included in the Data Management Buyers Guide, the product(s) must be marketed as a data management platform address at least three of the following functional areas, which are mapped into Buyers Guide capability criteria:

• Data intelligence
• Data governance
• Data quality
• Master data management
• Data integration

The research is designed to be independent of the specifics of software provider packaging and pricing. To represent the real-world environment in which businesses operate, we include providers that offer suites or packages of products that may include relevant individual modules or applications. If a software provider is actively marketing, selling and developing a product for the general market and it is reflected on the provider’s website that the product is within the scope of the research, that provider is automatically evaluated for inclusion.

All software providers that offer relevant data management products and meet the inclusion requirements were invited to participate in the evaluation process at no cost to them.

Software providers that meet our inclusion criteria but did not completely participate in our Buyers Guide were assessed solely on publicly available information. As this could have a significant impact on classification and ratings, we recommend additional scrutiny when evaluating those providers.

Products Evaluated

Providers of Promise

We did not include software providers that, as a result of our research and analysis, did not satisfy the criteria for inclusion in this Buyers Guide. These are listed below as “Providers of Promise.”