Modern data management requires a variety of technologies and tools to support the people responsible for ensuring that data is trustworthy and secure. Conquering the data challenge has led to a massive number of vendors offering solutions that promise to solve data issues.  

With the evolving vendor landscape, it can be difficult to know where to start. It can also be difficult to understand how to determine the best way to evaluate vendors to be sure you’re seeing a true representation of their capabilities—not just sales speak. When it comes to data intelligence, it can be difficult to even define what that means to your business.

With budgets continuously stretched even thinner and new demands placed on data, you need data technologies that meet your needs for performance, reliability, manageability, and validation. Likewise, you want to know that the product has a strong roadmap for your future and a reputation for service you can count on, giving you the confidence to meet current and future needs.

Independent Assessments Are Key to Informing Buying Decisions

Independent analyst reports and buying guides can help you make informed decisions when evaluating and ultimately purchasing software that aligns with your workloads and use cases. The reports offer unbiased, critical insights into the advantages and drawbacks of vendors’ products. The information cuts through marketing jargon to help you understand how technologies truly perform, helping you choose a solution with confidence.

These reports are typically based on thorough research and analysis, considering various factors such as product capabilities, customer satisfaction, and market performance. This objectivity helps you avoid the pitfalls of biased or incomplete information.

For example, the 2024 Buyers Guide for Data Intelligence by ISG Research, which provides authoritative market research and coverage on the business and IT aspects of the software industry, offers insights into several vendors’ products. The guide offers overall scoring of software providers across key categories, such as product experience, capabilities, usability, ROI, and more.

In addition to the overall guide, ISG Research offers multiple buyers guides that focus on specific areas of data intelligence, including data quality and data integration.

ISG Research Market View on Data Intelligence

Data intelligence is a comprehensive approach to managing and leveraging data across your organization. It combines several key components working seamlessly together to provide a holistic view of data assets and facilitate their effective use. 

The goal of data intelligence is to empower all users to access and make use of organizational data while ensuring its quality. As ISG Research noted in its Data Quality Buyers Guide, the data quality product category has traditionally been dominated by standalone products focused on assessing quality. 

“However, data quality functionality is also an essential component of data intelligence platforms that provide a holistic view of data production and consumption, as well as products that address other aspects of data intelligence, including data governance and master data management,” according to the guide.

Similarly, ISG Research’s Data Integration Buyers Guide notes the importance of bringing together data from all required sources. “Data integration is a fundamental enabler of a data intelligence strategy,” the guide points out.   

Companies across all industries are looking for ways to remove barriers to easily access data and enable it to be treated as an important asset that can be consumed across the organization and shared with external partners. To do this effectively and securely, you must consider various capabilities, including data integration, data quality, data catalogs, data lineage, and metadata management solutions.

These capabilities serve as the foundation of data intelligence. They streamline data access and make it easier for teams to consume trusted data for analytics and business intelligence that inform decision making.

ISG Research Criteria for Choosing Data Intelligence Vendors

ISG Research notes that software buying decisions should be based on research. “We believe it is important to take a comprehensive, research-based approach, since making the wrong choice of data integration 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,” according to the company.  

In the 2024 Data Intelligence Buyers Guide, ISG​​ Research evaluated software and presented findings in key categories that are important to modern businesses. The evaluation offers a framework that allows you to shorten the cycle time when considering and purchasing software.

For example, ISG Research encourages you to follow a process to ensure the best possible outcomes by:

• Defining the business case and goals. Understand what you are trying to accomplish to justify the investment. This should include defining the specific needs of people, processes, and technology. Ventana Research, which is part of ISG Research, predicts that through 2026, three-quarters of enterprises will be engaged in data integrity initiatives to increase trust in their data.
• Assessing technologies that align with business needs. Based on your business goals, you should determine the technological capabilities needed for success. This will ensure you maximize your technology investments and avoid paying for tools that you may not require. ISG Research notes that “too many capabilities may be a negative if they introduce unnecessary complexity.”
• Including people and defining processes. While choosing the right software will help enforce data quality and facilitate getting data to more people across your organization, it’s important to consider the people who need to be involved in defining and maintaining data quality processes.
• Evaluating and selecting technology properly. Determine the business and technology approach that best aligns with your requirements. This allows you to create criteria for meeting your needs, which can be used for evaluating technologies.

As ISG Research points out in its buyers guide, all the products it evaluated are feature-rich. However, not all the capabilities offered by a software provider are equally valuable to all types of users or support all business requirements needed to manage products on a continuous basis. That’s why it’s important to choose software based on your specific and unique needs.

Buy With Confidence

It can be difficult to keep up with the fast-changing landscape of data products. Independent analyst reports help by enabling you to make informed decisions with confidence.

Actian is providing complimentary access to the ISG Research Data Quality Buyers Guide that offers a detailed software provider and product assessment. Get your copy to find out why Actian is ranked in the “Exemplary” category.

If you’re looking for a single, unified data platform that offers data integration, data warehousing, data quality, and more at unmatched price-performance, Actian can help. Let’s talk. 

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