ISG Research is happy to share insights gleaned from our latest Buyers Guide, an assessment of how well software providers’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements. The Operational Data Platforms: ISG Research Buyers Guide is the distillation of a year of market and product research by ISG Research.
Operational data platforms include relational and non-relational databases (including
ISG Research defines operational data platforms as environments for organizing and managing the storage and processing of data generated by applications targeted at business users and decision-makers to run the business, including finance, operations and supply chain, sales, human capital management, customer experience and marketing. In contrast, analytic data platforms are typically deployed to support applications used by data and business analysts to analyze the business.
Since the 1980s, the operational data platforms market has been dominated by the relational data model and relational database management systems. However, non-relational data models that pre-date relational, such as the hierarchical model, remain in use today. Recent decades have also seen the proliferation of non-relational data platforms as the use of NoSQL databases using key-value, document and graph models has increased.
Almost all enterprises will ultimately need to use a combination of operational data platforms. The initial adoption of non-relational database offerings is typically driven by the need to serve very specific requirements associated with the individual data model. As such, the various data models continue to be important considerations for non-relational database use cases. However, while a few specialist databases remain, a period of evolution and functional consolidation has resulted in most products supporting multi-model capabilities.
Many non-relational databases are now able to support a combination of data models, blurring the lines between the appropriate use cases. Additionally, non-relational database software providers have also added capabilities and features that have previously been the preserve of the incumbent relational databases, including relational database concepts and even the SQL query language. Furthermore, we have seen adoption driven by requirements that transcend the data model. Developer agility is one such driver, as is horizonal scalability, which is increasingly important given the growing requirement for cloud-agnostic data platforms that support availability and scalability across multiple regions and data centers/cloud providers. One approach does not suit all use cases, and enterprises use a variety of operational data platforms to fulfill the spectrum of requirements for a myriad of applications.
While there have always been general-purpose databases that could be used for both analytic and operational workloads, traditional architectures have involved the extraction, transformation and loading of data from the operational data platform into an external analytic data platform. This enables the operational and analytic workloads to run concurrently without adversely impacting each other, protecting the performance of both.
This dynamic has been altered by the recent growth in the development of intelligent applications infused with contextually relevant recommendations, predictions and forecasting driven by machine learning (ML), generative AI (GenAI) and agentic AI. The
The Operational Data Platforms Buyers Guide assesses software providers and products positioned as operational data platforms on their ability to serve the specific requirements of operational use cases. Separately, we have also created the Analytic Data Platforms Buyers Guide, which excludes dedicated operational functionality and data platforms. Additionally, the Data Platforms Buyers Guide assesses a software provider’s ability to serve a combination of both operational and analytic workloads with either a single data platform product or a set of data platform products, taking into account the analytic processing capabilities of operational data platforms, and vice versa. Our assessments also considered whether the functionality in question was available from a software provider in a single offering or as a suite of products or cloud services.
The ISG Buyers Guide™ for Operational Data Platforms evaluates software providers and products in key areas, including data persistence, data management, data processing and data query; database administrator functionality; developer functionality; data engineering functionality; and data architect functionality. To be considered for inclusion in the Operational Data Platforms Buyers Guide, a product must be marketed as a general-purpose data platform, database or database management system. The primary use case for the product should be to support worker- and customer-facing operational applications (such as financial, resource planning, human resources, customer management/experience, e-commerce or supply chain).
This research report evaluates the following software providers which offer products that are considered operational data platforms as we define it: Actian, Aerospike, Aiven, Alibaba Cloud, AWS, Broadcom, Cloudera, Cockroach Labs, Couchbase, EDB, Google Cloud, Huawei Cloud, IBM, IBM DataStax, InterSystems, MariaDB, Microsoft, MongoDB, Neo4j, Oracle, Percona, PingCAP, Progress Software, Redis, Salesforce, SAP, SingleStore, Tencent Cloud, VAST Data and Yugabyte.
This research-based index evaluates the full business and information technology value of operational data platforms software offerings. We encourage you to learn more about our Buyers Guide and its effectiveness as a provider selection and RFI/RFP tool.
We urge organizations to do a thorough job of evaluating operational data platforms offerings in this Buyers Guide as both the results of our in-depth analysis of these software providers and as an evaluation methodology. The Buyers Guide can be used to evaluate existing suppliers, plus provides evaluation criteria for new projects. Using it can shorten the cycle time for an RFP and the definition of an RFI.
The Buyers Guide for Operational Data Platforms in 2025 finds Oracle first on the list, followed by InterSystems and Google Cloud.
Software providers that rated in the top three of any category ﹘ including the product and customer experience dimensions ﹘ earn the designation of Leader.
The Leaders in Product Experience are:
The Leaders in Customer Experience are:
The Leaders across any of the seven categories are:
Note that close provider scores should not be taken to imply that the packages evaluated are functionally identical or equally well-suited for use by every enterprise or process. Although there is a high degree of commonality in how organizations handle operational data platforms, there are many idiosyncrasies and differences that can make one provider’s offering a better fit than another.
ISG Research has made every effort to encompass in this Buyers Guide the overall product and customer experience from our operational data platforms blueprint, which we believe reflects what a well-crafted RFP should contain. Even so, there may be additional areas that affect which software provider and products best fit an enterprise’s particular requirements. Therefore, while this research is complete as it stands, utilizing it in your own organizational context is critical to ensure that products deliver the highest level of support for your projects.
You can find more details on our community as well as on our expertise in the research for this Buyers Guide.