Ventana Research Analyst Perspectives

Organizations are dealing with exponentially increasing data that ranges broadly from customer-generated information, financial transactions, edge-generated data and even operational IT server logs. A combination of complex data lake and data warehouse capabilities are required to leverage this data. Our research shows that nearly three-quarters of organizations deploy both data lakes and data warehouses but are using a variety of approaches which can be cumbersome. A single platform that can...

Businesses are transforming their organizations, building a data culture and deploying sophisticated analytics more broadly than ever. However, the process of using data and analytics is not always easy. The necessary tools are often separate, but our research shows organizations prefer an integrated environment. In our Data Preparation Benchmark Research, we found that 41% of participants use Analytics and Business Intelligence tools for data preparation.

Traditional on-premises data processing solutions have led to a hugely complex and expensive set of data silos where IT spends more time managing the infrastructure than extracting value from the data. Big data architectures have attempted to solve the problem with large pools of cost-effective storage, but in doing so have often created on-premises management and administration challenges. These challenges of acquiring, installing and maintaining large clusters of computing resources gave rise...

Organizations are always looking to improve their ability to use data and AI to gain meaningful and actionable insights into their operations, services and customer needs. But unlocking value from data requires multiple analytics workloads, data science tools and machine learning algorithms to run against the same diverse data sets. Organizations still struggle with limited data visibility and insufficient insights, which are often caused by a multitude of reasons such as analytic workloads...

The annual Ventana Research Digital Innovation Awards showcases advances in the productivity and potential of business applications, as well as technology that contributes significantly to improved efficiency and productivity in the processes and the performance of an organization. Our goal is to recognize technology and vendors that have introduced noteworthy digital innovations that advance business and IT.

Every organization performing analytics with multiple employees needs to collaborate. They should be collaborating in the analytics process and in communicating the results of those analyses. As I continue my evaluation of analytics and data vendors, I have to admit some disappointment at the level of collaborative capabilities some analytics vendors provide. To be fair, the level of capabilities vary widely, but I expected collaborative capabilities to be more uniformly available as a standard...

For decades, data integration was a rigid process. Data was processed in batches once a month, once a week or once a day. Organizations needed to make sure those processes were completed successfully—and reliably—so they had the data necessary to make informed business decisions. The result was battle-tested integrations that could withstand the test of time.

Ventana Research has been evaluating analytics and business intelligence (BI) software for a long time—almost 20 years. Our methodology for these assessments is referred to as a Value Index. We use weightings derived from our benchmark research about how you, as buyers of these technologies, value and evaluate vendors. You can view our 2019 Value Index results here. I am in the process of completing the 2020 evaluation now.

In this analyst perspective, Dave Menninger takes a look at data lakes. He explains the term “data lake,” describes common use cases and shares his views on some of the latest market trends. He explores the relationship between data warehouses and data lakes and share some of Ventana Research’s findings on the subject. He also provides an assessment of the risks organizations face in working with data lakes and offers recommendations for maximizing the potential of data.

Supercharging the customer experience (CX) is more than just an opportunity. It’s essential for every organization that looks to optimize engagement at every moment of the customer journey. In times such as these, when business continuity is a top priority, organizations must address the customer experience, especially if it has not been a focal point of the executive team.