Ventana Research Analyst Perspectives

We are happy to share some insight on Domo drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements. Earlier this year we published the Ventana Research Value Index: Analytics and Business Intelligence 2019, the distillation of a year of market and product research efforts. We then developed three additional Value Indexes on Analytics and BI focusing on mobile, embedded and collaborative capabilities. Because each is a critical aspect of modern business intelligence, we developed specific criteria for each in order to provide an in-depth look at features geared specifically to mobile, embedded and collaborative use.

In all of our Value Indexes we utilize a structured research methodology that includes evaluation categories designed to reflect real-world criteria incorporated in a request for proposal (RFP) and vendor selection process for analytics and business intelligence. We evaluated Domo and 14 other vendors in seven categories, five relevant to the product (adaptability, capability, manageability, reliability and usability) and two related to the vendor (TCO/ROI and vendor validation). To arrive at the Value Index rating for a given vendor, we weighted each category to reflect its relative importance in an RFP process, with the weightings based on our experience and on data derived from our benchmark research on analytics and business intelligence.

The public cloud offering for analytics and business intelligence by Domo, now a publicly traded company, ranks seventh overall in the Value Index. Its architecture is based on a data model that involves data loaded into Domo’s cloud service with connectors provided for hundreds of cloud and on-premises data sources. The company has continued to broaden the functionality of the product to make it more competitive with category leaders.

Domo’s product ranks first in Usability, which has been a consistent focus of the company. The company ranks first in TCO/ROI, offering good material to help support the business case for using its products. Domo also excels in the areas of collaboration and communication, supporting analytic business processes that include assigning tasks and tracking their progress to completion.

MOBILE ANALYTICS & BI

It is common for public cloud offerings such as Domo to deliver a native mobile experience and Domo performs well above average in navigating and interacting with information on a mobile device. Its support for native applications on both iOS and Android gives its customers a rich mobile experience. There are still some areas where Domo could improve its mobile experience, such as annotations and offline analyses. For mobile use, Domo earns an overall fourth place ranking.

EMBEDDED ANALYTICS & BI

Domo is a cloud-based offering that requires most data to be loaded into the Domo repository. The product also includes some capabilities for hybrid data access when large data sources are accessed or organizations prefer not to load data into the Domo repository. Domo has made its APIs open source and has posted them to GitHub.

Domo’s first-place ranking in Usability shows in its embedded usage. The product scored above average on integration but below average on customization, suggesting that it is better suited for certain types of embedded usage. While the product supports analytic business processes such as assigning tasks and tracking their progress to completion, the API offers limited support for these capabilities.

COLLABORATIVE ANALYTICS & BI

Domo excels in the areas of collaboration and communication and has been a pioneer in a number of these areas; its collaborative framework is named Buzz. In this Value Index evaluation the product ranks fourth in capabilities. Domo incorporates many features often found in social media tools, as among them chat capabilities and user profile pages. The product also does a good job publishing and sharing information via alerts, notifying even external users via its Cards feature.

The company’s lowest rankings are in Reliability and Adaptability, where it places 11th and 10th respectively. Improved agent capabilities would allow organizations to include Domo in their existing business processes via automation so they can get more value out of their implementations. The use of resources and performance of the system are critical factors for embedded usage and metrics that provide visibility into them would help organizations better understand and plan their deployments of this product. Also, improved configuration, integration and API capabilities would allow organizations to include Domo in their existing business processes to get more value out of their implementations.

This assessment was based on Domo’s August 2018 release. Since the completion of the research, the company has released several updates, including Domo Integration Cloud, Domo Business Automation Engine, Domo IoT Cloud and Domo for Amazon Web Services. The vendor has advanced its support in the adaptability and manageability categories. It also has released new features including certified content, data science enhancements, natural language generation, data set sharing and visualization enhancements.

This research-based index is the most comprehensive assessment of the value of analytics and business intelligence software in the industry. Technology buyers can learn more about how to use our Value Index by clicking here and included vendors that wish to learn more can click here. Read the report here.

Regards

Ventana Research