Key Takeaways from Gartner’s 2020 Market Guide for Data Preparation Tools
The editors at Solutions Review provide their key takeaways from Gartner’s 2020 Market Guide for Data Preparation Tools.
Analyst house Gartner, Inc. recently released its new 2020 Market Guide for Data Preparation Tools. The researcher’s Market Guide series is meant to cover new and emerging markets where software products and organizational requirements are in limbo. Gartner’s Market Guides can be a great resource for understanding how a fledgling space may line up with current and future technology needs.
According to Gartner, “With the focus on early, more chaotic markets, a Market Guide does not rate or position vendors within the market, but rather more commonly outlines attributes of representative vendors that are providing offerings in the market to give further insight into the market itself.”
Though Gartner’s Market Guide is not provider-centric and instead aims to provide a more overarching view of the software space, the research house does mention the major players to watch as things take shape. Many of the solution providers included offer key capabilities in horizontal markets, such as BI and data analytics and data management.
Gartner highlights the following representative providers in data preparation to consider: Altair (formerly Datawatch), Alteryx, Boomi (formerly Unifi Software), Datameer, DataRobot-Paxata, Elegant MicroWeb, Explorium, Google Cloud Platform, IBM, Infogix, Informatica, Lore IO, Modak Analytics, Quest Software, Rapid Insight, SAP, SAS, Talend, Tamr, and Trifacta, At Solutions Review, we read the report, available here, and pulled out the key takeaways.
Data preparation software is a “must-have technology” for enabling business teams to find, prepare and share heterogeneous data for their integration, analytics and data science use cases. Gartner adds that software buyers must understand the dynamics of this market prior to making purchasing decisions. Selecting the best data preparation tool can be a complex process due to the crowding in this space. Gartner adds: “Choices range from stand-alone specialists to vendors that embed data preparation as a key capability.”
Gartner recommends that data and analytics leader deploy data preparation software with the chief focus of enhancing user understanding of data. This can be done by prioritizing technologies that automate the process of moving self-service workloads into production environments through metadata and integration support. It is also recommended to evaluate stand-alone data preparation tools when use cases are general in nature. Embedded data preparation should be a consideration if it is only needed in tandem with the platform associated with it.