New research from the Information Services Group finds that as more organisations adopt Generative AI (GenAI)- powered applications, the demand for advanced data platforms capable of supporting both operational and analytical processing is likely to grow significantly over the next three years.
“The importance of advanced data platforms capable of supporting both operational and analytic workloads has been accentuated by an increased investment in artificial intelligence,” said Matt Aslett, director of analytics and data research at ISG. “While data-driven companies continue to use specialist analytic and data science platforms to train models offline, online predictions and recommendations require operational data platforms capable of performing AI inferencing in real-time.”
GenAI capabilities
Around 25% of 40 providers evaluated by ISG have generally available digital assistant capabilities for converting natural language questions into database queries. Another 25% have natural language query capabilities in preview. Half of the providers have such capabilities in development.
Blurring lines
The report reveals that the increasing importance of AI-driven intelligent operational applications is blurring the traditional segmentation between operational and analytic data platforms. Users leverage the former to support applications for running the business, such as finance, operations, sales, and customer experience, while the latter for decision support, business intelligence, data science, and AI/ML analysis.
“The use of data platforms is essential to the digital foundation of every enterprise and to the governed utilisation of AI, which overall needs to be trusted and used securely, but also must be reliable and adaptable to the systems across the cloud and on-premises environments,” said Mark Smith, partner, ISG Software Research.