Ventana Research Releases Buyers Guide for Mobile Analytics

    BEND, OR, September 27, 2023 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Today Ventana Research released its 2023 Buyers Guide for Mobile Analytics, a quantified, research-based report evaluating technology providers and products. The Buyers Guide assesses 22 vendors' products using our Value Index methodology to evaluate software in seven key categories that are weighted to reflect buyers' needs based on our expertise and research. The Buyers Guide focuses on the challenge of delivering analytics and business intelligence (BI) on a variety of mobile devices including smartphones and tablets.

The processes and technology of the mobile analytics software industry play an instrumental role in enabling an organization's business units and IT to optimally utilize data in both tactical and strategic ways. To accomplish this, organizations must provide technology that can access the data, generate and apply insights from analytics, communicate the results, and support collaboration as needed.

For analytics to be effective, they need to be available to line-of-business personnel as needed in their normal course of conducting business, which today means providing rich mobile access to analytics to support a mobile workforce seeking to conduct business in any location at any time. Workers today expect these mobile capabilities, so organizations must make choices to provide analytics platforms that can deliver. Many of these workers switch between desktop/laptop devices when in the office to mobile devices when outside the office or even when attending an internal meeting, so integration between these two modes is important as well.

Analytics vendors are divided in their approach to providing mobile capabilities. Many vendors have invested in developing applications that are native to the two platforms that dominate the mobile landscape: Apple's iOS and Google's Android operating system. Other vendors have opted to invest in an HTML5 approach, often in combination with a helper application that provides some of the native capabilities such as participation in the store or marketplace where applications are distributed. Our research suggests that both approaches can be effective.

"Mobile analytics have become table stakes among vendors' product offerings today, but the range of capabilities varies widely," said David Menninger, SVP and Research Director at Ventana Research. "In many ways mobile devices are becoming the glue of organizations' analytics communities, tying together conversational, collaborative, and traditional analytics. This research helps distinguish how vendors meet different organizations' requirements." 

The Buyers Guide for Mobile Analytics evaluates the following vendors that offer products that address key elements of mobile data as we define it: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Cloud Software Group, Domo, GoodData, Google, IBM, Idera, Incorta, Infor, insightsoftware, Microsoft, MicroStrategy, Oracle, Pyramid Analytics, Qlik, SAP, SAS, Sigma Computing, Sisense, Tableau (Salesforce), ThoughtSpot and Zoho.

The research finds Oracle first on the list with SAP in second place and Qlik in third. Companies that place in the top three of a category earn the designation of Leader. Oracle has done so in six of the seven categories; SAP in four; IBM in three; Qlik and Domo in two; and Microsoft, MicroStrategy, Sisense, and Tableau in one category each.

The research places vendors into one of four overall categories: Exemplary, Innovative, Assurance, or Merit. This representation classifies vendors' weighted performance overall in Product Experience and Customer Experience. The vendors were awarded the following categories:

- Exemplary: Domo, IBM, Oracle, Qlik, SAP, Tableau, and Zoho.
- Innovative: Idera, Microsoft, MicroStrategy, and SAS.
- Assurance: GoodData, Incorta, insightsoftware, and Sisense.
- Merit: AWS, Cloud Software Group, Google, Infor, Pyramid Analytics, Sigma Computing and ThoughtSpot.

This Ventana Research Buyers Guide for Mobile Analytics is the distillation of over a year of market and product research efforts. It is an assessment of how well vendors' offerings will address organizations' requirements for mobile analytics software. The index is structured to support a request for information (RFI) that could be used in the RFP process by incorporating all criteria needed to evaluate, select, utilize, and maintain relationships with technology vendors. An effective product and customer experience with a technology vendor can ensure the best long-term relationship and value achieved from a resource and financial investment.

The structure of the research reflects our understanding that the effective evaluation of vendors and products involves far more than just examining product features, potential revenue, or customers generated from a vendor's marketing and sales efforts. We believe it is important to take a comprehensive research-based approach since making the wrong choice of mobile analytics technology can raise the total cost of ownership, lower the return on investment, and hamper an organization's ability to reach its potential performance. In addition, this approach can reduce the project's development and deployment time and eliminate the risk of relying on a short list of vendors that do not represent the best fit for your organization.

"Gaining insights from analytics requires making them accessible to everyone which in turn means making them available on mobile devices where a large portion of the workforce and business professionals operate throughout the day," said Mark Smith, CEO and Chief Research Officer at Ventana Research. "The Buyers Guide on Mobile Analytics is unique in that it helps identify the vendors and products that are best for enterprises to assess and evaluate for their needs. The research provides a simple and unified approach to what should be included in an RFI, and not what a vendor articulates as their vision or their revenue results like found in other analyst firms' research."

The Buyers Guide for Mobile Analytics is neither sponsored nor influenced by technology vendors and is conducted solely in pursuit of Ventana Research's mission to provide value to business and IT (Information Technology) through the Consulting, Advisory, Research, and Education (CARE) portfolio of services. Ventana Research's goal is to help guide organizations to optimal efficiency in their use of technology investments for business and IT. Please click here to learn more and read the Buyers Guide for Mobile Analytics.

About Ventana Research

Ventana Research is the most authoritative and respected market research and advisory services firm. We provide insight and expert guidance on mainstream and disruptive technologies through a unique set of research-based offerings including benchmark research and technology evaluation assessments, education workshops, and our research and advisory services, Ventana On-Demand. Our unparalleled understanding of the role of technology in optimizing business processes and performance and our best practices guidance are rooted in our rigorous research-based benchmarking of people, processes, information, and technology across business and IT functions in every industry. This benchmark research plus our market coverage and in-depth knowledge of hundreds of technology providers means we can deliver education and expertise to our clients to increase the value they derive from technology investments while reducing time, cost, and risk.

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