BARC Study: The Data Management Survey 23 Shows High Satisfaction With Tools

BARC publishes The Data Management Survey 23, the world’s largest fact-based analysis of the market for data management software. 1,236 respondents provided detailed information on their use of software from 16 different vendors, including products from software giants such as Microsoft, Oracle and SAP, as well as tools from much smaller vendors that are less well known but in many cases provide excellent value to customers.

Meaningful comparisons of competing products

Unlike many analyst reports, The Data Management Survey 23 is not based on anecdotal reports or personal opinions, nor is it intended as a measure of market share. Instead, it is about analyzing market trends and making meaningful comparisons of competing products based on a variety of critical software and vendor-related criteria. The study also provides a detailed quantitative analysis of why customers buy data management tools, what they are used for, what problems they have with the tools, and how successful their deployments are.

General findings

The majority of users report being “very satisfied” (38%) or “fairly satisfied” (47%) with their data management tools, confirming their added value. One in three organizations also report having no significant problems using the tools, and in general, problems are at a very low level. In fact, 39% of respondents say they would “definitely” recommend their solutions to others, and another 45% would “probably” do so.

Timm Grosser, senior analyst at BARC and co-author of the study, said: “Data management tools can help to increase flexibility in data usage and get a grip on the complexity of highly distributed data landscapes. The survey results show that most companies have recognized the added value of such tools and are using them in a beneficial way for their business.”

Companies use their tools for traditional BI tasks

Looking at the tasks implemented with data management tools, there is a clear focus on business intelligence tasks. Data warehousing/BI is performed by 71% of survey respondents and data integration by 54%. The use of advanced analytics and newer concepts such as data virtualization is relatively limited.

38% of respondents say they are doing data preparation. This is notable because no specialized data preparation tools are featured in this survey. ‘Data preparation’ is defined as an iterative process that helps business users prepare data sets for exploratory analysis. Most of the tools presented in this survey are designed for technical users and provide limited interfaces for business users.

However, looking at the use of this term in the broader market, a second definition emerges: it is also used to describe ETL processes. This explains the widespread use of technical tools for data preparation.