Free buyer’s guide

Buyer’s Guide to Data Platforms

How to choose the right data platform
Make a well-founded platform decision before vendor demos, roadmaps, and AI promises start driving the selection.
Includes an interactive checklist: Assess the most important vendor questions based on their relevance to your organization.

With the Buyer’s Guide to Data Platforms, you will

  • clarify the role your data platform should play in the target architecture,
  • identify the most important requirements for workloads, integration, governance, AI, operations, and costs,
  • prepare your shortlist, RFI, vendor demos, and proof of concept with clear selection questions, a compact scorecard, and the included interactive vendor checklist.

Join over 250,000 annual readers!

“BARC surveys give me a practical overview of what’s out there in the market and what you don’t normally hear about data, BI and analytics in your day-to-day life”.

Pietro Grammatico, Director Service Management BI, Vorwerk

Further information

A data platform affects how your organization provides, integrates, protects, and uses data for analytics and AI. At the same time, data warehouses, lakehouses, governance, semantics, and AI capabilities are converging. This makes platform selection more complex and increases the importance of architecture fit, cost control, and exit capability.

The Buyer’s Guide to Data Platforms helps data and analytics leaders compare platforms based on more than features. It shows how to understand market segments, weight requirements, and assess vendors using verifiable evidence.

What you will find in the guide:

  • An overview of key platform segments and market dynamics
  • 16 guiding questions covering strategy, architecture, governance, AI, operations, and economics
  • A mini scorecard for the initial assessment
  • An interactive vendor checklist for briefings, RFIs, demos, and PoCs

The guide is based on BARC research, BARC’s software selection methodology, and the data platform expertise of BARC analysts.

Includes an interactive checklist: Assess the most important vendor questions based on their relevance to your organization.

Author(s)

Timm Grosser
Senior Analyst Data & Analytics
Timm Grosser is a Senior Analyst Data & Analytics with a focus on data management.

FAQ

Please click the “Download” button above, fill in the form and click on “Submit”. After a few minutes, you will receive an email with a link to the content.

Absolutely! We want to provide you with free knowledge that can benefit you in your work. Keep us in mind when you need assistance with your next project!

We ask you to provide some information in exchange for our free content so we can send you information from time to time that may be of interest to you.

Since we operate in the B2B space, we only accept registrations from business addresses. If for some reason you would like to register with your private email address, please contact us directly at [email protected].

Here is some guidance:

  • If your company does not offer software consulting or solutions, and the use of one or more software solutions (e.g., BI or ECM solutions) is either part of your everyday work or in the pipeline, then please select the option "work for a software user company" regardless of your industry sector or company size.
  • Do you work for a company that offers software solutions (e.g., BI or ECM solutions)? Then please select "work for a software provider".
  • If your company offers IT/software consulting or services, then "work for an IT service provider/consulting firm" is the right choice.
  • Do you work or study in an educational institution such as a university or a research institute? Then choose "work/study in an educational institution".
  • Do you work as an IT journalist and write technical articles, features, blogs etc. for media companies? Then please click on "work as a journalist".
  • Does your company invest in companies in the B2B software sector? Then please select "work for an investment company."
  • If you do not feel you belong to any of the above categories, please select "None of the above/Other".

If you are unable to submit the form, please copy the URL of this page and open it in another browser. Google Chrome usually works fine. If that doesn’t work, please try Firefox, Microsoft Edge or Safari.

If you have not received an email with a link to the content after several minutes, please do the following:

  1. Check your spam folder. Did the email land there? If not...
  2. Have you unsubscribed from all BARC mailings in the past? Check this by entering your email address in the form. If the text " Looks like you've opted out of email communication. Click here to get an email and opt back in." appears below your email address, click on it. We will then send you an automated email. Click on the link in the email to enter your "Subscription Center". To ensure you receive an email with the link to free content, please select "BARC products and services". Now fill out the form again. If you still do not receive an email, please continue with step 3.
  3. Are BARC’s email sending domains blocked in your company? This could be the case if your colleagues do not receive BARC mailings either. Please ask your IT/email team to add BARC's email sending domain to their allowlist. This will enable you to receive emails from BARC. That wasn't the problem either? Then off to step 4.
  4. It seems that we made a mistake. We apologize for that. Please contact [email protected] and describe your problem in detail, if possible with screenshots. We will find a solution as soon as possible. Promise!
Prepare your data platform decision with confidence
Download the buyer’s guide for free
Download for free now!
DATA festival Online. Experience Data & AI with the community shaping what’s next.