ISG Sees Intensifying U.S. Demand for Analytics

U.S. enterprises are investing more in data analytics services and platforms as employees at all levels gain more appreciation for the value of data, according to two new reports by Information Services Group (ISG).

ISG's research found that companies now recognize the need to make relevant data and analytics capabilities available to all departments and lines of business, and the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated growth in demand for analytics and helped organizations prioritize investments and innovations.

"Getting the most value from data analytics requires a sound strategy and an understanding of how analytics projects can improve business outcomes," said Kathy Rudy, partner and chief data and analytics officer of ISG. "Enterprises are partnering with service and platform providers to develop solutions that can empower all employees and grow with the organization."

Despite the ongoing economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses are investing in scalable data analytics platforms that democratize access to data and deliver business results, the report noted. This is bringing self-service business intelligence (BI) and data preparation and integration to the forefront, it said.

Self-service BI allows users to gain deeper insights from available data, and ISG expects these tools to include voice-based querying and better cognitive capabilities soon. Data preparation and integration is essential for building unified analytics platforms that can perform data search, collection, analysis, visualization, reporting and other functions in complex, often siloed enterprise data environments, the firm concluded.

The research firm is also seeing a new breed of specialized data preparation and integration vendors, offering better support for multiple data sources, gaining ground on large traditional enterprise vendors that tend to rely on their own systems. Platform providers with extensive cloud expertise and vendors offering cloud services for data collection and connectivity are also growing as more enterprises roll out multicloud and hybrid cloud environments, it said.

The research also found data analytics expanding into new vertical markets, including consumer goods, manufacturing, healthcare and life sciences.

Several service providers have begun to develop platforms and tools in the form of pre-built solutions, in some cases competing directly with platform vendors, the report says. These have fewer functions than platforms from pure-play vendors but are designed as consumer-grade solutions to help existing clients include more employees in their data-centric business initiatives.

As companies increase their use of data science, concerns are growing about trust and the responsible use of artificial intelligence, something service providers are addressing by creating trustworthy frameworks that ISG expects to become standard offerings that differentiate them competitively.

Meanwhile, service providers have renewed their focus on compliance, governance, and regulatory practices, especially to meet data privacy and AI ethics requirements, the report says. ISG expects providers to include automated compliance in their data management systems to address these concerns.

Among the companies offering these technologies, ISG singled out Accenture, Atos, Capgemini, Cognizant, Deloitte, DXC Technology, IBM, Infosys, Wipro, Tech Mahindra, HCL, TCS, Hexaware, LTI, IBM, SAP, SAS, TIBCO, Hitachi Vantara, Informatica, Microsoft, Oracle, Qlik, Sisense, Tableau, Talend, Teradata, Qlik, and Zoho as among the top providers.