Executive Summary
Key Takeaways
Enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives depend on the ability to manage, govern and operationalize data across the organization. Fragmented or inconsistent data environments often limit the transition from experimentation to production AI deployments. As intelligent applications become embedded in operational processes, enterprises are prioritizing platforms that integrate AI development with enterprise data management.
Software Provider Summary
The ISG Buyers Guide™ for AI and Data Platforms evaluates 16 software providers offering products supporting integrated data management, AI model development and operational deployment across enterprise environments. The research ranked the top three overall leaders as Oracle, Databricks and AWS. Providers were classified using weighted performance in Product Experience and Customer Experience for ISG quadrant placement. AWS, Databricks, Google Cloud, IBM, Oracle, SAP and Teradata were rated as Exemplary, with Alibaba Cloud, Microsoft and Snowflake rated as Innovative. Huawei Cloud and Salesforce were rated as Assurance; and Cloudera, Couchbase, EDB and Tencent Cloud were rated as Merit.
Product Experience
Product Experience, representing 80% of the evaluation, focuses on Capability (50%) and Platform (30%), which includes adaptability, manageability, reliability and usability. Oracle, Databricks and IBM achieved the highest performance as Leaders in this category, supported by breadth across AI and data platform capabilities, including AI and machine learning (ML) modeling, generative AI (GenAI) and data engineering functions, and robust, scalable platform architectures that support governance, integration and enterprise operations. Leaders demonstrated enterprise-grade platform capabilities that support diverse enterprise workloads and users across data, AI and operational contexts.
Customer Experience
Customer Experience, representing 20% of the evaluation, focuses on validation and TCO/ROI. AWS, IBM and Oracle were the Leaders in this category, showing strong customer advocacy and clear investment in success outcomes. Providers with lower performance often lacked publicly available customer validation or failed to demonstrate structured ROI measurement and proactive lifecycle engagement.
Strategic Recommendations
Enterprises should evaluate AI and data platforms as integrated foundations for intelligent applications rather than independent technology layers. Platform selection should prioritize architectural scalability, governance capabilities and support for both analytic and operational workloads. Organizations should also assess how effectively providers enable coordination across data engineering, model development and deployment processes. Establishing a unified platform strategy can reduce duplication, control infrastructure costs and accelerate the operationalization of AI.
The Findings
The software providers and products evaluated in this research offer product and customer experiences, but not every feature is equally valuable to every enterprise or is needed to support the relevant business processes and use cases. Moreover, having too many product capabilities may be a negative factor for an enterprise if it introduces unnecessary complexity. Nonetheless, you may decide that a more comprehensive set of capabilities is important and meets your enterprise’s requirements.
An effective customer relationship with a software provider is vital to the success of any investment. The overall customer experience and the full lifecycle of engagement play a key role in ensuring satisfaction and long-term success. Providers with dedicated customer leadership, such as chief customer officers, tend to invest more deeply in these relationships and prioritize customer outcomes in line with TCO and ROI expectations. It is equally important that this commitment to customer success is evident throughout the provider’s website, the buying process and the customer journey.
Overall Scoring of Software Providers Across Categories
The research finds Oracle atop the list, followed by Databricks and AWS. Providers that place in the top three of a category earn the designation of Leader. Oracle has done so in five categories; Databricks in four; and AWS and IBM in three categories.
The quadrant chart below presents ratings for Product Experience and Customer Experience on the x- and y-axes, respectively, to visually classify software providers. Those providers whose Product Experience has above-median weighted performance on the axis, in aggregate across the two product categories, place farther to the right. The performance and weighting for the Customer Experience category determine 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 categorizes and rates software providers into one of four categories: Assurance, Exemplary, Merit or Innovative. Placement represents the software providers’ weighted performance in meeting the requirements of product and customer experience.
Exemplary: This rating (upper right) applies to those providers that performed above the median on Product and Customer Experience requirements. The providers rated Exemplary are: AWS, Databricks, Google Cloud, IBM, Oracle, SAP and Teradata.
Innovative: This rating (lower right) applies to those that performed above median in Product Experience but not in Customer Experience. The providers rated Innovative are: Alibaba Cloud, Microsoft and Snowflake.
Assurance: This rating (upper left) applies to those that performed above median in Customer Experience but not in Product Experience. The providers rated Assurance are: Huawei Cloud and Salesforce.
Merit: This rating (lower left) applies to those that did not surpass the median in Customer or Product Experience. The providers rated Merit are: Cloudera, Couchbase, EDB and Tencent Cloud.
We advise enterprises to use this research as a supplement to their own evaluations, recognizing that ratings or rankings do not solely represent a provider’s value nor indicate universal suitability of a set of products.
