ISG Provider Lens™ Analytics - Platforms and Solutions - Global Summary Report - December 2021
The market for analytics solutions and platforms has become highly competitive in the past few years. While in the early years the differentiators could mainly be seen in the technical approaches, the offerings are now comparable on different parameters: competency of staff, including academics and professionals, and approach taken for a client.
Acquisition is becoming a major inorganic growth strategy
Some of the global IT majors, including Accenture, Deloitte, Cognizant, Atos, Tech Mahindra and Wipro have acquired niche companies that specialize in data science services,MLOps, AIOps, data engineering, data lifecycle management, self-service data preparation solutions and data catalog solutions to better manage customer data and foster analytics-led business outcomes. A few other acquisitions have been aimed at supporting analytics enablement on multicloud or hybrid cloud environments to enable better integration and data processing techniques and to improve visibility across businessunits within an enterprise.
“Analytics services are gaining traction as service providers target advanced AI/ML initiatives, hyper-automation and data federation needs of enterprises and data users. Data science, data engineering and data lifecycle management are becoming increasingly relevant to enable data-driven culture across enterprises.”– Gowtham Kumar – Principal Analyst, U.S.
Demand for data science services is increasing among enterprises
Globally, enterprises are fast moving to cloud environments, which, in turn, is driving the need to organize and maintain data seamlessly. These cloud-first enterprises are rapidly upgrading to data science and data engineering, primarily to streamline data and support CIOs and marketing and product managers with real-time insights and business-critical decisions. In addition to AI and natural language processing (NLP), Data Science as a Service, computer vision, audio and video analytics and responsible AI are some of the areas of focus for service providers.
“Taking the road from the data-driven enterprise towards the data enterprise is one of the new paradigms that drives analytics services adoption. Nevertheless, without a well-thought roadmap many analytics IT projects will fail.” – Holm Landrock, Principal Advisor, Distinguished Analyst
Service providers are continuing to invest in upskilling to gain domain expertise
Despite the high adoption of data science, big data and data engineering among enterprises, skilled workforce is limited. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, enterprises are increasingly demanding improved solution and service capabilities from providers. Skill upgrading is being considered as essential to analytics and necessary for service providers to increase deal value. A significant number of providers are spending on certifications and reskilling and upskilling their workforce to meet business goals. Some examples include the Data Academy by DXC Technology and Applied Innovation Exchange (AIE) by Capgemini.
“There is a correlation between market leadership and local presence in the country. Platform vendors that have local offices and offer sponsored webinars, free training courses, and community events tend to have better positions in the market.”– Marcio Tabach – Lead Analyst, Brazil
Hybrid cloud environment is driving analytics adoption
Driven by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, enterprises are shifting their workloads to the cloud to gain the benefits of scalability and transparency as a part of their digital transformation journey. Data analytics could be considered as a steppingstone toward successful business transformation. Enterprises are seeking consulting support to design realistic business goals. Service providers are increasing their capabilities across major cloud platforms or are recognizing the importance of doing so. The goal is to empower data engineers with better integration and data architecture capabilities. This is prompting service providers offer a single system to help enterprises manage IT resources in an optimized way.
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