Analytical platforms continue to mature and gain traction in the market. In 2024, a slight majority of organizations (55 percent) favor deploying and using an integrated analytical platform from a single vendor, while a minority of respondents (albeit a sizeable one—45 percent) prefer to use an analytical platform that the organization built itself from best-of-breed components.
The argument of whether to choose best-of-breed components and integrate your own analytical solution or go with an analytical platform from a single provider starts only once a market reaches a certain level of maturity. Such evolution is a natural part of the maturation and adoption of all technologies—business intelligence (BI) and analytics included. Before that point, best-of-breed components abound; and many early platforms cannot compare, resulting in a de facto predisposition by most organizations to choose the best tools available, and bear the burden of integration and maintenance of separate products as the cost of superior functionality. Fast forward to that maturity point, and new entrants (often larger vendors) have integrated many core analytical features into their own single-platform offerings, differentiating themselves not only by analytical functionality but also ease of use that eliminates much of the management and integration requirements associated with assembling a best-of-breed solution.
We believe that the trend in our data will continue to show a slow but steady movement of organizations toward choosing an analytical platform from a single provider, and away from identifying, integrating, and managing their own analytical platform assembled from best-of-breed components. The data show that the question of whether an analytical platform from a single supplier can compare favorably to a best-of-breed alternative is resolved. The answer is yes—or an increasingly larger majority of organizations would not be buying and deploying these analytical platforms.
However, improving capabilities and increasing maturity in analytical platforms from a single provider do not mean these offerings and a single-vendor approach automatically deserve a “fast track” when data leaders need to make a decision about analytic infrastructure. As is always the case with this type of decision, numerous factors come into play—the set of which almost always will be unique to a specific organization.
Data leaders need to ensure that these factors—such as business needs, use cases supported, capabilities required, and resources needed to integrate and maintain a unique analytical platform—are identified, prioritized, and assigned a weighting value. Once needs and requirements are distilled to this level, an organization has a methodology that allows it to effectively and appropriately compare whether an integrated offering from a single provider or a combination of best-of-breed components makes best business sense as the organization’s analytical platform.
However, such a decision rarely is simple and “black and white.” Many times, a comparison of critical decision factors creates many “gray areas,” which require data leaders to further analyze differences and weigh tradeoffs before deciding whether it is best for the organization to go with a best-of-breed analytical platform or one from a single provider. For example, although single-provider platforms come from large, stable providers, include many “core” capabilities, and tend to require less management, organizations considering them could encounter limitations in functionality (compared to best-of-breed offerings), as well as customization and configuration options.
Conversely, a best-of-breed approach often results in the best functional fit with business needs and requirements and deploys market-leading capabilities that can help fuel the creation of sources of competitive advantage. However, building an analytical platform from best-of-breed components also requires having skills with multiple products and access to extensive resources for integration and customization. It also creates a need to manage a stable of often smaller vendors, whose ongoing viability or potential acquisition could create additional risk to the organization (compared to using a single, large analytical platform provider). Furthermore, a best-of-breed platform by its very nature—cobbling together multiple disparate systems—in general tends to need more management in the long term (which increases ongoing operational costs).
Data leaders in organizations predisposed to best-of-breed approaches need to recognize that single-vendor integrated analytical platforms—especially as these continue to mature and deliver improved capabilities—represent strong consideration, despite not historically being viewed as viable options in their organizations.
Similarly, organizations that adopted analytical platforms from single providers early should not let precedent unnecessarily influence upcoming analytical platform decisions. Factors such as changing business requirements, increasingly specialized analytical needs, and even industry and regulatory requirements can create capability “holes” so serious that an organization may need to consider migrating to a different single-vendor platform, or even assembling and integrating its own platform from best-of-breed components.
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