GigaOm Radar for Streaming Data Platforms: Streaming Data Specialist Vendorsv2.0

Table of Contents

  1. Summary
  2. Market Categories and User Segments
  3. Key Criteria Comparison
  4. GigaOm Radar
  5. Vendor Insights
  6. Analyst’s Take
  7. About Andrew Brust

1. Summary

This Radar report will help enterprise buyers become familiar with streaming data platforms and vendor offerings.

The vendors reviewed in this Radar are streaming specialists and offer something that vendors with broader platforms cannot: a streaming-centric view of data and analytics. From that unique vantage point, streaming isn’t just an option, but rather the primary mode of data ingestion, such that even a batch data modality can fit within it. Data streams are the ingest mechanism and often the egress target as well. Event processing and messaging constitute the data sharing medium. Streams can be used even for data storage rather than just for data in transit. Streaming is a mindset and a paradigm.

For companies heavily involved with businesses or operational processes that revolve around streaming data use cases, including Internet of Things (IoT), wWeb analytics, financial markets, and online advertising, this “streaming-first” approach to data and analytics is a perfect fit. Many such customers will be modern tech companies, startups, or business units within large enterprises. For them, specialist companies will be very well-aligned philosophically with their own collection and use of data, and the primacy of it.

Conversely, streaming solutions from cloud vendors and enterprise software players may not be the best match for the customers just described, even if the streaming data platforms offered by those vendors meet their needs for specific capabilities. For those vendors, streaming data is part of their fabric and likely a high priority, but it’s not the dominant technology or even first among equals.

How to Read this Report

This GigaOm report is one of a series of documents that helps IT organizations assess competing solutions in the context of well-defined features and criteria. For a fuller understanding, consider reviewing the following reports:
Key Criteria report: A detailed market sector analysis that assesses the impact that key product features and criteria have on top-line solution characteristics—such as scalability, performance, and TCO—that drive purchase decisions.
GigaOm Radar report: A forward-looking analysis that plots the relative value and progression of vendor solutions along multiple axes based on strategy and execution. The Radar report includes a breakdown of each vendor’s offering in the sector.
Solution Profile: An in-depth vendor analysis that builds on the framework developed in the Key Criteria and Radar reports to assess a company’s engagement within a technology sector. This analysis includes forward-looking guidance around both strategy and product.