Analyst Perspectives

The development, testing and deployment of data pipelines is a fundamental accelerator of data-driven strategies, enabling enterprises to extract data from the operational applications and data platforms designed to run the business and load, integrate and transform it into the analytic data platforms and tools used to analyze the business. As I explained in our recent Data Pipelines Buyers Guide, data pipelines are essential to generating intelligence from data. Healthy data pipelines are...

In the technology industry, 2023 will be remembered as the year of generative artificial intelligence. Yes, the world was made aware of GenAI when ChatGPT was publicly launched in November of 2022, but few knew the impact it would have at that point in time. Since then, GenAI has taken the world by storm, with vendors applying the technology to make it easier to ask questions about data, write code (including SQL), prepare data for analyses, document data pipelines and use software products...

Cloud computing has had an enormous impact on the analytics and data industry in recent decades, with the on-demand provisioning of computational resources providing new opportunities for enterprises to lower costs and increase efficiency. Two-thirds of participants in Ventana Research’s Data Lakes Dynamic Insightsresearch are using a cloud-based environment as the primary data platform for analytics. 

Zoho recently held its annual analyst day to communicate its strategy, objectives and product roadmap. The privately held company, headquartered in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, has an unconventional approach to the software market. Its self-described corporate philosophy emphasizes making bold moves that challenge assumptions. Its design engineering approach stresses simplicity and cost while aiming to provide easy-to-use software with sufficient capabilities to improve personal and...

After a year of near-constant AI chatter, the broad strokes of how the technology will roll out in business over the next three to five years are coming into place. It’s almost trite but worth repeating that artificial intelligence will drive a substantial boost in productivity as it’s adopted. Rather than making large swathes of jobs obsolete, it will take the robotic work out of those job descriptions, enabling people to focus on tasks with a greater economic return. 

The first wave of discussions around artificial intelligence (AI) in the contact center was focused on providing software buyers with a general understanding of what the technology could do. Now the conversations are becoming more specific, focused and direct. Buyers are more aware of the spectrum of available use cases and appear to be exploring how to map new tools to the particular business problems they face. Contact center buyers are approaching new technology deployments (or enhancements...

I have previously written about the impact of intelligent operational applications on the requirements for data platforms. Intelligent applications are used to run the business but also deliver personalization, recommendations and other features generated by machine learning and artificial intelligence. As such, they require a combination of operational and analytic processing functionality. The emergence of these intelligent applications does not eradicate the need for separate analysis of...

Digitally transforming finance operations has been a priority since 2020. For purchasing and the procure-to-pay cycle, software can streamline processes, shorten process times, reduce unnecessary costs, provide greater visibility into cash flows, increase control and improve results. Digitizing operations helps attract and retain the best talent because professionals spend less time on mechanical, repetitive tasks. For all these reasons, beginning this year, Ventana Research’s Office of Finance...

We’ve been saying for years that natural language processing (NLP) and natural language analytics would greatly expand access to analytics. However, prior to the explosion of generative AI (GenAI), software providers had struggled to bring robust natural language capabilities to market. It required considerable manual effort. Many analytics providers had introduced natural language capabilities, but they didn’t really resonate with enterprise requirements. They required significant effort to...

With Ventana Research’s 2024 Digital Business Market Agenda, we continue the guidance we have offered for two decades to help enterprises derive maximum value from digital business technology investments. Through our market research and expertise, we identify trends and best practices and share insights on how to achieve technological effectiveness, particularly in key processes and systems to engage the workforce.