15 top providers of data quality tools

15 top providers of data quality tools

Informatica, Syncsort, Talend, Information Builders and BackOffice Associates are among the leading vendors for data quality software, according to a new Gartner Magic Quadrant report.

Data quality garners rising importance f

Digital transformation initiatives are putting new strains on data quality efforts, according to Gartner. In turn, this strain is disrupting the market for data quality tools and increasing data quality requirements for buyers and sellers. To help make sense of it all, the research firm has released a Magic Quadrant report that looks at 15 leading vendors for data quality software. The report was written by Gartner analysts Melody Chien and Ankush Jain.

Leaders

“Leaders demonstrate strength in depth across the full range of data quality functions, including core functions (parsing, standardization and cleansing), profiling, interactive visualization, matching, multi-domain support and business-driven workflow,” the report explains. “Leaders exhibit a clear understanding of dynamic trends in the data quality market; they explore and execute thought-leading and differentiating ideas; and they deliver product innovations based on the market’s demands.”

IBM

“IBM has headquarters in Armonk, N.Y. Its data quality product is IBM InfoSphere Information Server for Data Quality. IBM has an estimated 2,500 customers for this product,” the report says. “IBM demonstrates deep understanding of this market, and aligns its sales and marketing activities accordingly. It appears frequently in competitive evaluations seen by Gartner and the survey participants.”

Informatica

“Informatica has headquarters in Redwood City, Calif. Its data quality products are Informatica Data Quality (IDQ), Big Data Quality, Axon Data Governance and Data as a Service. Informatica has an estimated 5,000 customers for these products,” the report says. “Informatica uses metadata-driven machine learning to identify data domain consistency, outliers and errors. Via a user interface, business users can train machine learning algorithms to learn from human data stewards. Reference customers report that the system uses what it learns to increase productivity and automate a range of tasks relating to the Internet of Things (IoT), data science, MDM, data governance and content-driven analytics.”

Oracle

“Oracle has headquarters in Redwood Shores, Calif. Its data quality product is Oracle Enterprise Data Quality (EDQ). Oracle has an estimated 550 customers for this product,” the report says. “Oracle EDQ provides broad and versatile data quality functionality, which customers can apply easily to a wide variety of data domains and use cases.”

SAP

“SAP has headquarters in Walldorf, Germany. Its data quality products include SAP Smart Data Quality, SAP Information Steward, SAP Data Services and SAP Data Hub. SAP has an estimated 14,000 customers for these products,” the report says. “SAP has rapidly increased data quality functions and broadened its connectivity, through its data quality solutions, SAP Data Hub and SAP HANA platform. It consistently innovates in many areas, such as with enhanced connectivity to various big data stores, machine-learning-driven data statistics with analytics and predictive modeling, and data quality microservices in SAP Data Hub.”

SAS

“SAS has headquarters in Cary, N.C. Its data quality products are SAS Data Management, SAS Data Quality and SAS Data Quality Desktop. SAS has an estimated 2,600 customers for these products,” the report says. “SAS is strategically transforming its data quality products by bringing them into SAS Viya, a cloud-ready platform with improved open-source support. SAS Viya enables tighter integration of data quality functions with SAS analytics, data integration, data preparation and data governance. Some rivals take a similar approach, but this is major advance for SAS customers.”

Syncsort

“Syncsort has headquarters in Pearl River, N.Y. Its data quality products are the Trillium Software System, Trillium Director, Trillium Global Locator, Trillium Cloud, Trillium Quality for Big Data, and Trillium Quality for SAP and Microsoft CRM. Syncsort has an estimated 1,100 customers for these products,” the report says. “Reference customers for Syncsort score its core data quality functionality—including profiling, standardization and cleansing, parsing, matching, linking and merging—above the survey average.”

Talend

“Talend has headquarters in Redwood City, Calif. Its data quality products are Talend Open Studio for Data Quality and Talend Data Management Platform. Talend has an estimated 1,500 licensed customers for these products,” the report says. “The overall ease of use of Talend’s data quality tools is highly praised by its reference customers. Setup and operation are easy to handle, especially for data stewards. The learning curve is minimal, lasting mere days or hours.”

Challengers

“Challengers have established presence, credibility and viability, along with robust product capabilities, and solid sales and marketing execution,” the report explains. “Challengers may not have the same breadth of offering as Leaders, and/or in some areas may not demonstrate as much thought leadership and innovation. For example, they may focus on a limited number of data domains (customer, product and location data, for example).”

Experian

“Experian has its corporate headquarters in Dublin, Ireland, though its largest markets are the U.S., the U.K. and Brazil. Its data quality products include Experian Pandora, Experian Aperture Data Studio and QAS Pro,” the report says. “Experian has an estimated 7,200 customers for these products. Experian recently released a new data management platform, Experian Aperture Data Studio. It includes enhanced data quality functions and has an improved user interface, workflow features and a full set of data quality tools for business users.”

Pitney Bowes

“Pitney Bowes has headquarters in Stamford, Conn. Its data quality product is the Spectrum Technology Platform. Pitney Bowes has an estimated 2,900 customers for this product,” the report says. “Reference customers for Pitney Bowes score the platform’s support for these key capabilities higher than the survey average. They especially appreciate the enhancements made for matching, using the vendor’s smart data quality feature, which uses machine learning technology.”

Visionaries

“Visionaries are innovators,” the report stresses. “Visionaries demonstrate a strong understanding of trends in the market. These include business audience focus, trust-based governance, growth in data diversity, low data latency, data quality analytics and intelligent capabilities, such as machine learning. Also included are new deployment options (such as cloud and IoT edge deployment), and alternative pricing models (such as open source and subscriptions). Visionaries’ product capabilities are mostly aligned with these trends, but not as completely as Leaders.”

Ataccama

“Ataccama has headquarters in Toronto, Canada. Its data quality product is Ataccama ONE. Ataccama has an estimated 330 customers for this product,” the report says. “Ataccama’s product licensing includes free trial licenses that offer data-profiling capabilities. This approach, together with the value of the vendor’s tools relative to their cost and customers’ expectations, remains very attractive to customers.”

Information Builders

“Information Builders has headquarters in New York. It offers Omni-Gen Data Quality Edition. Information Builders has an estimated 280 customers for this product,” the report says. “Information Builders has a good understanding of the data quality tool market and adjacent markets. Its Omni-Gen platform caters well to customers’ requirements for data quality, data integration and MDM.”

MIOsoft

“MIOsoft has headquarters in Madison, Wis. Its data quality product is MIOvantage. MIOsoft has an estimated 420 customers for this product,” the report says. “MIOsoft retains a loyal customer base and is among the highest-rated vendors in this Magic Quadrant for customer satisfaction. Reference customers especially praise its product capabilities, service and support for integration, and ease of deployment.”

Niche players

“Niche Players often specialize in a limited number of industries, geographic areas, market segments (such as small and midsize businesses) or data domains (such as customer data or location data),” the report explains. “They often have strong offerings for their chosen areas of focus and deliver substantial value for customers in those areas. However, Niche Players typically have limited market share and presence, limited functionalities or lack financial strength.”

BackOffice Associates

“BackOffice Associates has headquarters in Hyannis, Mass. Its data quality products are dspMigrate, dspMonitor, dspCompose, dspConduct and SAP Data Quality Accelerator by BackOffice Associates,” the report says. “BackOffice Associates has an estimated 320 customers for these products. BackOffice Associates’ tools provide good support for all data domains and offer capabilities suitable for a wide variety of customer use cases and data journeys. Support is especially strong in the product data domain.”

Innovative Systems

“Innovative Systems has headquarters in Pittsburgh. Its data quality products include Enlighten data quality suite and FinScan, which reside on the Synchronos platform. Innovative Systems has an estimated 1,000 customers for these products,” the report says. “Reference customers for Innovative Systems express a high degree of satisfaction with its service and support, giving it one of the highest overall scores in this area. Innovative Systems retains a loyal customer base. Some customers have been using its products for over 30 years.”

RedPoint Global

“RedPoint Global has headquarters in Wellesley Hills, Mass. Its data quality product is RedPoint Data Management. The vendor has an estimated 260 customers for this product,” the report says. “Overall, RedPoint offers rich and solid core functionality, especially in its address standardization and geospatial tools, which are available in over 200 countries (a high number compared with the other vendors in this Magic Quadrant). RedPoint has extensive fuzzy-matching capabilities at both consumer and business level.”