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Using our research, best practices and expertise, we help you understand how to optimize your business processes using applications, information and technology. We provide advisory, education, and assessment services to rapidly identify and prioritize areas for improvement and perform vendor selection
We provide guidance using our market research and expertise to significantly improve your marketing, sales and product efforts. We offer a portfolio of advisory, research, thought leadership and digital education services to help optimize market strategy, planning and execution.
Services for Technology Vendors
We provide guidance using our market research and expertise to significantly improve your marketing, sales and product efforts. We offer a portfolio of advisory, research, thought leadership and digital education services to help optimize market strategy, planning and execution.
Data Platforms
About Buyers Guide Inclusion
Product Briefing Period: Open
All providers that offer relevant products and meet the inclusion requirements are invited to participate in the Buyers Guide evaluation process, at no cost to them. If a provider does not respond to or declines the invitation, a determination is made whether to include it in our analysis based on our defined set of inclusion criteria. These criteria are designed to ensure we include in our evaluation providers’ geographic operations, customer base and revenue as well as all relevant aspects of the products’ fit for the particular category being evaluated. If a provider is actively marketing, selling and developing a product as reflected on its website that is within the scope of the Buyers Guide, it is automatically evaluated for inclusion. We have adopted this approach because we view it as our responsibility to assess all relevant providers whether or not they choose to actively participate.
To ensure the accuracy of the information we collect and ensure that the Buyers Guide reflects the concerns of a well-crafted RFP, we require participating providers to provide evaluation data across all seven categories. Ventana Research then validates the information, first independently through our knowledge base of product information and extensive web-based research, and then in consultation with the providers.
The Buyers Guide is designed to be independent of the specifics of provider packaging and pricing and whether the products are priced or sold as part of a suite or bundle or individually. To represent the real-world environment in which enterprises operate, we include providers that offer suites or packages of products, as the relevant individual modules or applications must still be evaluated by those responsible for those business processes. We take no position on the offering approach of the products or packages being offered; where options exist, enterprises using the Buyers Guide will need to decide whether they choose a suite of products or individual applications that best meet their requirements.
The 2024 Data Platforms Buyers Guide will consist of three parallel evaluations: analytic data platforms; operational data platforms; and overall data platforms, addressing both analytic and operational workloads. For inclusion in the Ventana Research 2024 Data Platforms Buyers Guide, a provider must be in good standing financially and ethically, sell products and provide support on at least two continents and have at least $100 million in annual or projected revenue or at least 200 customers. The principal source of the relevant business unit’s revenue has to be software-related and there must have been at least one major software release in the last 12 months. The product must be marketed as a data platform, database, database management system, data warehouse, data lake or data lakehouse and the primary use-case for the product should be to support worker- and customer-facing operational applications (such as financial, resource planning, human resources, customer management/experience, ecommerce, or supply chain) and/or analytics workloads (business intelligence, or data science). The provider must have a product that provides the following functional areas at a minimum, which are mapped into Buyers Guide capability criteria:
- Core database functionality (data persistence, management, processing, and query)
- Database administrator functionality
- Developer functionality
- Data engineer functionality
- Data architect functionality
Buyers Guide Information Video
Please watch for more detailed information on the Buyers Guide process
Frequently Asked Questions
When are the submission files due and when will you publish the report? -
Completed surveys and customer references for this Buyers Guide are due on May 17, 2024. The scoring period is scheduled to last through June 2024, during which time we will contact references and schedule a briefing. The publication is currently scheduled for the July of 2024.
How (and to whom) should we deliver completed submission packages? +
Please upload the submission package and all supporting documents in our FileCloud portal. For all questions regarding FileCloud, please contact the research analyst Hayden at hayden.christie@isg-one.com
How does the customer reference process work? +
We ask that you provide three to five customer references along with your completed submission package. You can enter this information in the appropriate fields in the Intro & Data document, or you can provide it directly to the research program manager. We send each reference an email message with the questions below; alternatively, we are happy to have a phone call if the reference prefers to answer the questions that way. In all the process should not require more than 15 minutes of a reference’s time. All responses are confidential; while customer feedback is a valuable part of our evaluation, we do not share the content of reference interviews with the vendor or the general public.
Below is a list of questions we ask references. Analysts may follow up with an email message or phone call for clarification or further details.
- How long have you been working with the vendor, and using this product in particular?
- Which specific version of the product do you currently use?
- How many people use the product across your organization?
- What makes the product most valuable to your organization’s needs?
- What makes the product most unique to the needs of the organization?
- What were the main challenges during the deployment of the product?
- What are the main challenges (if any) since deploying and using the product?
- What areas would you like for the vendor to improve (relative to product or relationship overall)?
- If you’ve shared that feedback with the vendor, were you generally satisfied with the actions taken?
- What’s your level of satisfaction with the vendor’s products, support and partnering approach?
We would like to participate in the Buyers Guide but currently do not have the resources for this undertaking. How can we ensure the best score possible? +
We strongly encourage full participation in the Buyers Guide, but if this is not possible, we suggest you provide whatever documentation you have on your product — release notes,
any publicly available information and anything else that will help provide an accurate picture of the product for the analyst. We also suggest you provide customer references and
schedule a briefing with the analyst during the scoring period. Please contact Research Analyst Mawish Rahman for further information about limited participation.
How are the references contacted? +
- How many and what types of questions can they expect?
- There are about 10 questions, sent over email that they can answer electronically, call won’t be required.
- How long will the survey take to complete?
- 10-15 min
- How long do they need to have been a customer?
- Minimum one year
We would like to be excluded from the Buyers Guide; is this possible? -
Prior to initiating any new Buyers Guide, our leadership team develops criteria that include the nature of the product, product marketing, overall revenue and countries of operation. All products that meet the criteria are included in the Buyers Guide. In our view, this policy is essential for ensuring our evaluation is unbiased and that it accurately represents the state of the marketplace and the needs of business executives pursuing RFPs.
Are briefings/demos required? +
Yes, briefings are required for the purpose of confirming the analysts’ assessment and clarifying any outstanding issues. The analyst or research program manager will contact you to set this up during the scoring period.
What is required at the briefing? +
We ask that you imagine the briefing as a final pitch for a $1 million deal. Please plan for an hour and understand that schedules often prevent extending these sessions. We suggest you structure the briefing as follows, allotting about 15 minutes per segment: Company overview, product overview and demo, discussion of product as relates to the Value Index evaluation categories and Q&A.
May we review a previous Ventana Research Buyers Guide Market Report? +
More information about the Ventana Research Buyers Guide is on our website here. To purchase a buyers guide, please contact sales@ventanaresearch.com.
When can we see the report draft? +
We will share the courtesy copy of the Buyers Guide Report 72 hours prior publication.