What to Look for in Analytical Data Platforms for a Cloud-Centric World

Executive Summary

High-scale analytical data platforms are used by organizations to drive better decisions and actions and to provide differentiated products, services, and customer experiences. They provide historical and low-latency data for business intelligence (BI) and analytical analysis, supporting production-scale reporting and dashboarding; ad hoc query and analysis; and, in some cases, a foundation for data science, including machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI).

The high-scale analytical data platforms market historically has been dominated by database management systems (DBMSs) optimized for analytics and deployed on-premises as the backbone of data warehouses. Today customers are turning to cloud-based database services and emerging options such as data lake query engines and combined lake/warehouse platforms.

This market overview evaluates 14 high-scale analytical data platforms, including DBMSs, lake query engines, and combined lake/warehouse platforms. Most of the featured offerings are delivered as cloud services, but the report also details the availability of cloud marketplace offerings as well as software and specialized appliances that can be deployed on-premises. The report identifies key market trends and buying criteria and evaluates the key differentiators, functional capabilities, and strengths and weaknesses of each offering. Technology buyers should use this report to evaluate analytical data platforms for implementation.