LICENSED FOR INDIVIDUAL USE ONLY

The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Data Fabric, Q2

2020
The 15 Providers That Matter Most And How They Stack Up

by Noel Yuhanna
June 10, 2020

Why Read This Report Key Takeaways

In our 25-criterion evaluation of enterprise data Oracle, Talend, Cambridge Semantics, SAP,
fabric providers, we identified the 15 most Denodo, And IBM Lead The Pack
significant ones — Cambridge Semantics, Forrester’s research uncovered a market in which
Cloudera, DataRobot, Denodo Technologies, Oracle, Talend, Cambridge Semantics, SAP,
Hitachi Vantara, IBM, Informatica, Infoworks, Denodo Technologies, and IBM are Leaders;
Oracle, Qlik, SAP, Solix Technologies, Syncsort, DataRobot, Qlik, Cloudera, Syncsort, Hitachi
Talend, and TIBCO Software — and researched, Vantara, TIBCO Software, and Infoworks are
analyzed, and scored them. This report shows Strong Performers; and Informatica and Solix
how each provider measures up and helps Technologies are Contenders.
enterprise architecture professionals select the
AI/ML, Self-Service, And Graph Engine Are
right one for their needs.
Key Differentiators
As older technology becomes outdated and
less effective, AI and machine learning (ML),
self-service, and graph engine will dictate which
providers will lead the pack. Vendors that can
provide data intelligence, broad use cases, and
real-time data integration capabilities will lead in
this market.

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The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Data Fabric, Q2 2020

The 15 Providers That Matter Most And How They Stack Up

by Noel Yuhanna
with Gene Leganza, Robert Perdoni, and Christine Turley
June 10, 2020

Table Of Contents Related Research Documents

2 Data Fabric Strategy Is Vital For Business Data Virtualization Or Data Fabric: Which Is Right
Innovation For You?

3 Evaluation Summary The Forrester Tech Tide™: Data Management, Q1

2020
8 Vendor Offerings
Now Tech: Enterprise Data Fabric, Q2 2020
9 Vendor Profiles

Leaders

Strong Performers
Share reports with colleagues.
Contenders
Enhance your membership with
14 Evaluation Overview Research Share.

Vendor Inclusion Criteria

16 Supplemental Material

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The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Data Fabric, Q2 2020
The 15 Providers That Matter Most And How They Stack Up

Data Fabric Strategy Is Vital For Business Innovation

Traditional data integration is failing to meet new business requirements that demand a combination
of real-time connected data, self-service, and a high degree of automation, speed, and intelligence.
New and expanding data sources, batch data movement, rigid transformation workflows, growing
data volume, and distribution of data across multi- and hybrid cloud environments exacerbates the
issue. While collecting data from various sources is often straightforward, enterprises often struggle to
integrate, process, curate, and transform data with other sources to deliver a comprehensive view of
the customer, partner, product, and employee.

Data fabric is a hot, emerging market that delivers a unified, intelligent, and integrated end-to-end
platform to support new and emerging use cases. The sweet spot is its ability to deliver use cases
quickly by leveraging innovation in dynamic integration, distributed and multicloud architectures,
graph engines, and distributed in-memory and persistent memory platforms. Data fabric focuses on
automating the process integration, transformation, preparation, curation, security, governance, and
orchestration to enable analytics and insights quickly for business success. It minimizes complexity by
automating processes, workflows, and pipelines, generating code and streamlining data to accelerate
various use cases such as customer 360, data science, fraud detection, internet-of-things (IoT)
analytics, risk analytics, and healthcare insights.

As a result of these trends, enterprise data fabric customers should look for providers that:

›› Deliver self-service capabilities to automate data platforms. The best data fabric solutions
focus on data democratization by allowing business users to support easy discovery and
navigation of data assets. In addition, vendors now offer zero-code and low-code functionality
to accelerate even large and complex fabric deployments. Look for vendors that have expanded
AI/ML capabilities to automate data discovery, classification, security, ingestion, transformation,
processing, integration, and access in order to support various workloads and use cases.

›› Leverage graph engines to identify and integrate connected data. Graph is the fastest way to
connect data, especially when dealing with complex or large volumes of disparate data. Without
graph, it can take longer to connect data to support dynamic integration and orchestration. Look
for vendors that have invested the time and resources to integrate graph engines within the fabric
to help discovery relationships, automate the integration of diverse data sources, and simplify
data transformation.

›› Support comprehensive end-to-end data management capabilities. The key objective of

data fabric is to accelerate business use cases such as customer 360, customer intelligence,
risk analytics, and IoT analytics. To support this, an end-to-end data management capability that
includes ingestion, transformation, preparation, discovery, data catalog, integration, governance,
and security is essential. Look for vendors that offer uses cases relevant to your business, focus
on automating data management functions, enable extensibility through APIs, and help support
multiple personas to leverage data fabric.

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The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Data Fabric, Q2 2020
The 15 Providers That Matter Most And How They Stack Up

Evaluation Summary
The Forrester Wave™ evaluation highlights Leaders, Strong Performers, Contenders, and Challengers.
It’s an assessment of the top vendors in the market and does not represent the entire vendor
landscape. You’ll find more information about this market in our reports on enterprise data fabric.

We intend this evaluation to be a starting point only and encourage clients to view product evaluations
and adapt criteria weightings using the Excel-based vendor comparison tool (see Figure 1 and see
Figure 2). Click the link at the beginning of this report on Forrester.com to download the tool.

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FOR ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE PROFESSIONALS June 10, 2020
The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Data Fabric, Q2 2020
The 15 Providers That Matter Most And How They Stack Up

FIGURE 1 Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Data Fabric, Q2 2020

Enterprise Data Fabric

Q2 2020

Strong
Challengers Contenders Performers Leaders

Stronger
current
offering Talend
SAP

Oracle
IBM
Cloudera Denodo
Infoworks Technologies
Informatica Cambridge
Semantics
Qlik
Syncsort

DataRobot
Hitachi Vantara
TIBCO Software
Solix Technologies

Weaker
current
offering

Weaker strategy Stronger strategy

Market presence*

*A gray bubble indicates a nonparticipating vendor.

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FOR ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE PROFESSIONALS June 10, 2020
The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Data Fabric, Q2 2020
The 15 Providers That Matter Most And How They Stack Up

FIGURE 2 Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Data Fabric Scorecard, Q2 2020

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Current offering 50% 3.56 3.56 3.10 3.82 2.94 4.10 3.58 3.42
Data connectivity 6% 3.00 5.00 3.00 5.00 3.00 5.00 3.00 3.00
Data pipeline 6% 3.00 5.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 5.00
Data discovery 5% 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 5.00 5.00 3.00
Data preparation 4% 5.00 3.00 5.00 5.00 1.00 5.00 3.00 5.00
Data catalog 6% 5.00 5.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 5.00 3.00 3.00
Data lineage 5% 3.00 3.00 5.00 5.00 3.00 5.00 3.00 5.00
Data security 6% 3.00 5.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 5.00 5.00 3.00
Data governance 5% 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 5.00 3.00 3.00
Data processing and persistence 4% 5.00 3.00 3.00 5.00 5.00 3.00 3.00 3.00
Data transformation 4% 5.00 3.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 3.00 5.00 5.00
Data quality 4% 3.00 1.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 5.00 3.00 3.00
Data integration 6% 5.00 3.00 3.00 5.00 3.00 5.00 5.00 5.00
Data access and search 4% 5.00 3.00 3.00 5.00 5.00 3.00 3.00 5.00
Data fabric deployment 8% 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 5.00 3.00
Data fabric management 6% 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 1.00 3.00 3.00 3.00
Performance and scale 8% 3.00 3.00 1.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00
Data fabric integrated solution 5% 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 1.00 3.00 3.00 3.00
Use cases 8% 3.00 5.00 3.00 5.00 3.00 5.00 3.00 1.00

All scores are based on a scale of 0 (weak) to 5 (strong).

*Indicates a nonparticipating vendor

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FOR ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE PROFESSIONALS June 10, 2020
The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Data Fabric, Q2 2020
The 15 Providers That Matter Most And How They Stack Up

FIGURE 2 Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Data Fabric Scorecard, Q2 2020 (Cont.)

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Strategy 50% 4.40 3.00 3.80 3.70 3.10 3.10 1.80 2.50
Roadmap 35% 5.00 3.00 3.00 5.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00
Vision 40% 5.00 3.00 5.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 1.00 3.00
Strategy execution 20% 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 1.00 1.00
Professional services and 5% 1.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 5.00 5.00 3.00 1.00
support

Market presence 0% 2.20 3.60 1.60 2.20 3.00 4.40 3.00 1.00
Revenue 40% 1.00 3.00 1.00 1.00 3.00 5.00 3.00 1.00
Customer base 30% 1.00 5.00 1.00 3.00 5.00 5.00 3.00 1.00
Solution awareness 30% 5.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 1.00 3.00 3.00 1.00

All scores are based on a scale of 0 (weak) to 5 (strong).

*Indicates a nonparticipating vendor

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FOR ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE PROFESSIONALS June 10, 2020
The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Data Fabric, Q2 2020
The 15 Providers That Matter Most And How They Stack Up

FIGURE 2 Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Data Fabric Scorecard, Q2 2020 (Cont.)

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Current offering 50% 3.94 3.28 4.10 2.28 3.48 4.14 2.96
Data connectivity 6% 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 5.00 5.00 3.00
Data pipeline 6% 5.00 3.00 5.00 1.00 5.00 5.00 3.00
Data discovery 5% 3.00 3.00 5.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00
Data preparation 4% 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 5.00 5.00 3.00
Data catalog 6% 3.00 3.00 3.00 1.00 5.00 5.00 3.00
Data lineage 5% 5.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 5.00 3.00
Data security 6% 5.00 5.00 5.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00
Data governance 5% 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00
Data processing and persistence 4% 3.00 3.00 5.00 1.00 5.00 5.00 3.00
Data transformation 4% 5.00 3.00 5.00 3.00 3.00 5.00 3.00
Data quality 4% 3.00 3.00 5.00 3.00 5.00 5.00 3.00
Data integration 6% 5.00 3.00 5.00 1.00 3.00 5.00 5.00
Data access and search 4% 5.00 3.00 5.00 3.00 3.00 5.00 3.00
Data fabric deployment 8% 3.00 3.00 5.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00
Data fabric management 6% 3.00 3.00 3.00 1.00 1.00 3.00 3.00
Performance and scale 8% 5.00 3.00 3.00 1.00 3.00 3.00 1.00
Data fabric integrated solution 5% 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00
Use cases 8% 5.00 5.00 5.00 3.00 3.00 5.00 3.00

All scores are based on a scale of 0 (weak) to 5 (strong).

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FOR ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE PROFESSIONALS June 10, 2020
The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Data Fabric, Q2 2020
The 15 Providers That Matter Most And How They Stack Up

FIGURE 2 Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Data Fabric Scorecard, Q2 2020 (Cont.)

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Strategy 50% 4.60 3.60 3.80 2.90 2.90 4.10 3.00
Roadmap 35% 5.00 5.00 5.00 3.00 3.00 5.00 3.00
Vision 40% 5.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00
Strategy execution 20% 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 5.00 3.00
Professional services and 5% 5.00 1.00 5.00 1.00 1.00 3.00 3.00
support

Market presence 0% 4.40 3.60 4.40 1.00 3.00 4.20 2.40

Revenue 40% 5.00 3.00 5.00 1.00 3.00 3.00 3.00
Customer base 30% 5.00 5.00 5.00 1.00 3.00 5.00 3.00
Solution awareness 30% 3.00 3.00 3.00 1.00 3.00 5.00 1.00

All scores are based on a scale of 0 (weak) to 5 (strong).

Vendor Offerings
Forrester included 15 vendors in this assessment: Cambridge Semantics, Cloudera, DataRobot,
Denodo Technologies, Hitachi Vantara, IBM, Informatica, Infoworks, Oracle, Qlik, SAP, Solix
Technologies, Syncsort, Talend, and TIBCO Software (see Figure 3).

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The 15 Providers That Matter Most And How They Stack Up

FIGURE 3 Evaluated Vendors And Product Information

Vendor Product evaluated

Cambridge Semantics Anzo, AnzoGraph

Cloudera Cloudera Data Platform

DataRobot Paxata

Denodo Technologies Denodo Platform

Hitachi Vantara Lumada Data Services

IBM IBM Cloud Pak for Data

Informatica Informatica Intelligent Data Management

Infoworks DataFoundry

Oracle Oracle GoldenGate, Oracle Autonomous Data Platform, Oracle Cloud

Infrastructure, Oracle Analytics Cloud

Qlik Qlik Data Catalyst, Qlik Replicate, Qlik Compose for Data Warehouse, Qlik
Compose for Data Lakes

SAP SAP HANA, SAP Data Intelligence, SAP Information Management, SAP
PowerDesigner, SAP Cloud Platform Integration

Solix Technologies Solix Common Data Platform

Syncsort Syncsort Connect, Syncsort Trillium, Syncsort Spectrum, Syncsort Ironstream

Talend Talend Data Fabric

TIBCO Software TIBCO Unify

Vendor Profiles
Our analysis uncovered the following strengths and weaknesses of individual vendors.

Leaders

›› Oracle continues its journey from databases and tools to data fabric. Oracle has gradually
expanded its data management to deliver an integrated data fabric to support various data fabric
use cases. Although Oracle’s key strength lies in databases, it has expanded its data management,
data security, data movement, data transformation, and streaming capabilities. Customers
use Oracle’s data fabric to support various use cases, including real-time analytics, customer

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The 15 Providers That Matter Most And How They Stack Up

intelligence, IoT analytics, and other applications and insights. As with its autonomous database
and data warehouse solutions, Oracle is now focusing on AI and ML and automation capabilities
for data management to deliver an integrated and automated data fabric platform.

Customers like Oracle’s overall data management offering, reliability and flexibility to support
customization, and technical support. However, some claim that it is expensive and that the
solution lacks maturity and strong automation built-in to support complex data fabric use cases.

›› Talend continues to expand its cloud data fabric offering. Talend components are based on the
Talend Data Fabric unified platform, which includes many open source frameworks. The Talend
Data Fabric includes capabilities such as Stitch data loader, big data integration, data services,
Talend API Designer, Talend data mapper, data quality, data preparation, data catalog, MDM,
pipeline designer, and data inventory. Talend has a single metadata model across products and a
single design and development interface, repository, and management console to support the data
fabric deployment. Talend continues to expand its cloud strategy including multicloud, offering
customers broad use cases that include customer 360 and IoT.

Customers like Talend’s data pipelining, technical support, data integration, and broad data
management capabilities. However, some claim that there are potential performance and scale
issues with complex deployment and that AI/ML capabilities and automation needed to accelerate
use cases are lagging. Talend has recently released new AI/ML capabilities to close this gap.

›› Cambridge Semantics leverages graph to accelerate data fabric use cases. Cambridge
Semantics’ Anzo uses semantics, knowledge graphs, and graph data models to load, map,
integrate, and catalog enterprise data, to expose relationships and the connections between data
and datasets, and to enable visual data exploration and discovery. It integrates with open source
and commercial products including Apache Spark, Kubernetes, and NLP as well as with data
warehouses, business intelligence, and AI/ML tools and technologies. Anzo’s graph data models
provide business users with a visual map of enterprise data that’s easy to understand, navigate,
and analyze even when your data is vast, siloed, and complex. Some of the top use cases include
customer 360, fraud detection, optimized clinical care, and integrated view of complex businesses
and accelerating R&D.

Customers like Cambridge Semantics’ graph model, data catalog, platform support, and ability
to support a broad number of data fabric use cases. However, some report that since the product
is maturing, it is not yet simple to use and have encountered some performance and scale issues
associated with complex deployments.

›› SAP enhances data management capabilities to support complex use cases. SAP continues
to extend its data management capabilities to deliver improved self-service and its integrated data
fabric capabilities to support broader use cases. SAP’s enterprise data fabric solution consists of
several products including SAP Data Intelligence, SAP HANA (smart data access and smart data
integration), SAP Information Management tools, SAP PowerDesigner, and SAP Cloud Platform

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Integration. SAP’s data fabric solution is certified to run on SAP Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure,
AWS, GCP, IBM, Alibaba Cloud, and Huawei Cloud Services. Enterprises use SAP’s big data fabric
to support various use cases, including a 360-degree view of the customer, fraud detection, the
IoT, and real-time insights.

Customers like SAP’s general data management capabilities, in-memory platform, search and
access, data integration, and technical support. However, some claim the data fabric solution lacks
strong product integration, its AI/ML capabilities are still evolving, and that they have high-end
scale concerns for large deployments.

›› Denodo Technologies offers a variety of data fabric use cases. Denodo is known for data
virtualization, and over the years it has also evolved into a data fabric vendor. Denodo’s data
fabric solution integrates key data management components, including data integration, data
ingestion, data transformation, data governance and security, to support new and emerging use
cases including customers 360, real-time and on-demand analytics, IoT analytics, and self-service
analytics. In addition, Denodo’s AI/ML capabilities, as well as automation, continue to enhance its
capabilities across data fabric components.

Customers like Denodo’s data virtualization product and the ability to quickly transition to data
fabric in order to support enterprise-focused data fabric use cases. However, some customers
claim that performance and scale issues exist, especially for larger and more complex data fabric
deployments, and that data catalog and data governance need improvements.

›› IBM focuses aggressively on AI capabilities for the fabric. IBM Cloud Pak for Data is IBM’s data
fabric solution comprised of different microservices that focus on collecting, organizing, analyzing,
and infusing data, plus leveraging AI. It uses both open source and closed source components to
support extensibility and customization. A typical data fabric deployment often includes capabilities
such as Data Virtualization, DataStage, Apache Spark, Streams, and Watson Knowledge Catalog.
IBM Cloud Pak for Data is supported on AWS, GCP, Microsoft Azure, and IBM and can be made
available anywhere Red Hat OpenShift runs. IBM Global Business Services and other consulting
organizations help deliver custom data fabric deployments, especially those that are large and
complex. IBM’s key strengths lie in connectivity to legacy platforms, good security frameworks,
data management capabilities, data governance, and scale.

Customers like IBM’s broad data fabric and data management offering and its ability to support
customization to deliver a broad range of data fabric use cases. However, some are concerned
about performance issues, especially for large, high-cost, or complex deployments, and lack of
integration among products that require consulting services.

Strong Performers

›› DataRobot joins the data fabric bandwagon with the acquisition of Paxata. DataRobot is
known for AI technology that enables organizations to democratize data science with end-to-end
automation to build and support ML models. With the acquisition of Paxata, it’s expanded the

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stack to support data fabric capabilities. Paxata is known for data preparation, and with expanding
data management capabilities, many organizations also leverage it to support data fabric use
cases. Paxata delivers a unified data fabric for data integration, data quality, enrichment, master
data, data preparation, collaboration, and data governance; further integration with DataRobot’s
products make it likely to deliver a highly improved and intelligent data fabric in the coming years.

Customers like DataRobot’s data preparation, technical support, and reliability. However, some
claim that there are scale and maturity issues and that data catalog and data pipelining need
improvements. They want support for broader AI/ML capabilities and automation to accelerate and
simplify deployments.

›› Qlik is building its data fabric solution through acquisitions. Qlik is known for its analytics
platform. With the acquisitions of Podium Data, Attunity, and RoxAI, it now supports a data fabric
platform. Qlik offers end-to-end real-time data integration and analytics to help companies build
data fabric quickly. Customers use Qlik to support various use cases including analytics for finance
IT, HR, and marketing. The key products comprising the data fabric include Qlik Data Catalyst, Qlik
Replicate, and Qlik Compose. Qlik continues to focus on AI/ML and automation to support self-
service capabilities, and its data fabric platform runs on multiple clouds including AWS, Google,
Microsoft, and Oracle cloud.

Customers like Qlik’s ease of use, technical support, and end-to-end platform to support data
and analytics. However, some claim that the data fabric use cases often require considerable
time and effort to build and support and that it lags in automation and broad governance and
compliance capabilities.

›› Cloudera’s data fabric solution starts to take shape. The merger of Cloudera and Hortonworks
has helped Cloudera build a more comprehensive data fabric solution. The Cloudera Data Platform
is an integrated platform that focuses on various data management components required to
support various data fabric use cases. It uses ML to autoscale workloads and supports multiple
clouds and hybrid clouds. With its Shared Data Experience (SDX), it provides a single layer
of management across the fabric components for access, security, and governance. Today,
enterprises are using Cloudera Data Platform for a variety of use cases including customer 360,
fraud detection, risk analytics, and IoT analytics.

Customers like Cloudera’s open data platform, flexibility, customization, and technical support.
However, some claim legacy versions of the platform are too complex to deploy and have
performance issues. Furthermore, the data management offering to support data fabric is still
evolving so often requires consulting services.

›› Syncsort offers a flexible data fabric to support customization. Syncsort, which rebranded
as Precisely on May 14, has been in the data management business for decades, and with its
acquisition of the Pitney Bowes’ software and data business, it will further expand its end-to-end
data fabric capabilities. Four key products — Syncsort Connect, Syncsort Trillium, Spectrum,

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and Syncsort Ironstream — comprise the data fabric. Syncsort continues to expand its AI/ML
capabilities in the fabric and automate the management to accelerate deployments. Common use
cases include customer 360, healthcare analytics, IoT and retail analytics, and fraud detection.

Customers like Syncsort’s scale and performance, overall data management products, data quality,
and technical support. However, some customers claim its data fabric solution is not mature, that
the user interface needs an overhaul, and that its automation capabilities are lagging.

›› Hitachi Vantara continues to enhance the data fabric platform. A key component of Hitachi
Vantara’s Lumada is Pentaho, which provides the core data integration capabilities and, with
the recent acquisition of Waterline Data, further expands its capabilities into data cataloging.
Lumada Data Services leverages open source components to offer flexibility and extensibility.
It also provides discrete capabilities that are configurable and composable into a range of data
management solutions for edge, to core, to multicloud deployments. In addition, it has a range of
partners that complement Lumada Data Services in the areas of connectors, data protection, and
data governance.

Customers like Hitachi Vantara’s data integration and data transformation capabilities and support
for Hadoop and Spark within the fabric solution. However, some claim its data catalog, data
governance, ease of use, and automation of the data fabric solution are lagging.

›› TIBCO Software ramps up its data fabric offering. TIBCO has always been known for analytics
and event-processing software, and with the acquisition of Cisco Systems Data Virtualization,
Orchestra Networks, and Snappydata, it now offers data fabric to help organizations with data and
analytics use cases. TIBCO’s data fabric is based on TIBCO Unify, which is comprised of several
products in the portfolio, including metadata management, MDM, data virtualization, data security,
and streaming. TIBCO Unify is tightly integrated and loosely coupled with other offerings from
TIBCO including data visualization, operational security components, application integration, and
data science platforms. Customers use TIBCO to support advanced analytics, fraud detection, IoT
analytics, and customer intelligence.

Customers like TIBCO’s end-to-end data and analytics capabilities, dynamic integration, data
virtualization, and technical support. However, some claim it lags in cloud integration, multicloud
environments, automation to simplify deployments, and performance issues when dealing with
complex deployments.

›› Infoworks focuses on building data fabric with DataFoundry. Infoworks’ DataFoundry

automates data operations and data orchestration for developing and managing data workflows
from ingestion all the way to consumption in cloud, multicloud, and hybrid environments. It
also provides native integration with Azure HDI; Amazon EMR; Google Dataproc; data storage
engines such as HDFS, S3, and GCS; and compute engines like Spark, Hive, and Databricks.
All DataFoundry components are accessible via a single user interface and through REST API.
Customers use Infoworks for many use cases including customer 360, fraud detection, healthcare
analytics, financial analytics, and real-time analytics.

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Customers like Infoworks’ ease of use, support for managing data workflows and orchestration,
and technical support. However, some claim that the solution is not mature and that Infoworks’
data management, data security, and data catalog capabilities are lagging.

Contenders

›› Informatica has a viable data fabric to support many use cases. Informatica’s strong legacy
on data management capabilities has paved the way to public cloud and hybrid cloud, supporting
even broader data fabric use cases. These include IoT, real-time operational intelligence, fraud
detection, social networking, and customer 360. Informatica’s intelligent data management solution
leverages AI-powered automation to help organizations accelerate their deployments. It offers an
intuitive visual and metadata-driven platform that helps customers parse, integrate, cleanse, and
match data across various sources quickly.

Customers like Informatica’s support for MDM, data quality, data integration, and data
management capabilities in various data fabric use cases. However, some claim it is expensive;
often requires a considerable amount of time and effort to build and deploy; and requires
customization, as not all products integrate easily. Informatica declined to participate in the full
Forrester Wave evaluation process.

›› Solix Common Data Platform offers a viable data fabric platform. Solix Technologies is
known for its data archiving and application retirement platform, and with Solix Common Data
Platform, it is now helping companies to organize, manage, and process data for advanced
analytics, compliance, and data-driven use cases. The platform has built-in features such as data
ingestion, data governance, metadata management, information lifecycle management (ILM), data
preparation, and visualization to help organizations accelerate data fabric initiatives. It’s built on
open source technologies and provides extensibility with third-party tools for customization and
more expanded use cases.

Customers like Solix’s data search and data archiving capabilities, total cost of ownership, and
technical support. However, some customers claim that the solution is not mature, that there are
scale and data issues, and that the solution lags in advanced data management capabilities.

Evaluation Overview
We evaluated vendors against 25 criteria, which we grouped into three high-level categories:

›› Current offering. Each vendor’s position on the vertical axis of the Forrester Wave graphic
indicates the strength of its current offering. Key criteria for these solutions include data
connectivity, data pipeline, data discovery, data preparation, data catalog, data lineage, data
security, data governance, data processing and persistence, data transformation, data quality,
data integration, data access and search, data fabric deployment, data fabric management,
performance and scale, data fabric integrated solution, and use cases.

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›› Strategy. Placement on the horizontal axis indicates the strength of the vendors’ strategies. We
evaluated roadmap, vision, strategy execution, and professional services and support.

›› Market presence. Represented by the size of the markers on the graphic, our market presence
scores reflect each vendor’s revenue, customer base, and solution awareness.

Vendor Inclusion Criteria

Forrester included 15 vendors in the assessment: Cambridge Semantics, Cloudera, DataRobot,

Denodo Technologies, Hitachi Vantara, IBM, Informatica, Infoworks, Oracle, Qlik, SAP, Solix
Technologies, Syncsort, Talend, and TIBCO Software. Each of these vendors has:

›› An enterprise data fabric solution or cloud service offering. The vendors included in this
evaluation must provide data fabric features and functionality as stated in our 2019 report “Big Data
Fabric 2.0 Drives Data Democratization.” These include features such as data: access, discovery,
transformation, catalog, integration, pipeline, preparation, security, governance, and orchestration.
The solution or offering must be able to ingest, process, and curate data and leverage one or more
data platforms such as Apache Hadoop, EDW, NoSQL, Apache Spark, as well as data lakes, object
stores, and in-memory technologies.

›› A referenceable install base. There should be five or more enterprise paying customers using
the enterprise data fabric solution or cloud service. Each vendor must provide at least three
customer references.

›› A publicly available solution or service. The participating vendors must have a general public
release of an enterprise data fabric solution or cloud service available as of February 20, 2020.

›› Customer interest. Forrester plans to include only vendors that have been mentioned several
times by customers during Forrester inquiry calls related to big data fabric topics during the past
12 months.

›› Surfaced in client inquiries and/or has technologies that Forrester noticed. Forrester clients
often discuss the vendors and products through inquiries and interviews; alternatively, the
vendor may, in Forrester’s judgment, warrant inclusion or exclusion in this evaluation because of
technology trends and market presence.

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Supplemental Material

Online Resource

We publish all our Forrester Wave scores and weightings in an Excel file that provides detailed product
evaluations and customizable rankings; download this tool by clicking the link at the beginning of this
report on Forrester.com. We intend these scores and default weightings to serve only as a starting
point and encourage readers to adapt the weightings to fit their individual needs.

The Forrester Wave Methodology

A Forrester Wave is a guide for buyers considering their purchasing options in a technology
marketplace. To offer an equitable process for all participants, Forrester follows The Forrester Wave™
Methodology Guide to evaluate participating vendors.

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In our review, we conduct primary research to develop a list of vendors to consider for the evaluation.
From that initial pool of vendors, we narrow our final list based on the inclusion criteria. We then gather
details of product and strategy through a detailed questionnaire, demos/briefings, and customer
reference surveys/interviews. We use those inputs, along with the analyst’s experience and expertise in
the marketplace, to score vendors, using a relative rating system that compares each vendor against
the others in the evaluation.

We include the Forrester Wave publishing date (quarter and year) clearly in the title of each Forrester
Wave report. We evaluated the vendors participating in this Forrester Wave using materials they
provided to us by April 2, 2020, and did not allow additional information after that point. We encourage
readers to evaluate how the market and vendor offerings change over time.

In accordance with The Forrester Wave™ Vendor Review Policy, Forrester asks vendors to review our
findings prior to publishing to check for accuracy. Vendors marked as nonparticipating vendors in the
Forrester Wave graphic met our defined inclusion criteria but declined to participate in or contributed
only partially to the evaluation. We score these vendors in accordance with The Forrester Wave™ And
The Forrester New Wave™ Nonparticipating And Incomplete Participation Vendor Policy and publish
their positioning along with those of the participating vendors.

Integrity Policy

We conduct all our research, including Forrester Wave evaluations, in accordance with the Integrity
Policy posted on our website.

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