Market Perspectives

We are happy to share some insights about Databricks drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We recently published three Ventana Research 2023 Data Platforms Value Indexes, which evaluate technology vendors and products that provide individual and combined analytic and operational data platform support. At Ventana Research, we continue to believe that, for most use cases, there is a clear choice between analytic and operational data platforms to best meet your organization’s needs. We developed three technology assessment and buyers’ guides to focus on overall data platform requirements as well as specific analytic data platform and operational data platform use cases.

In all of our Value Indexes, we utilize a structured research methodology built on evaluation categories designed to reflect real-world criteria and derived from RFP responses and a vendor selection process for analytics and business intelligence (BI). For each of the Value Indexes, we evaluated Databricks and other vendors in seven categories: five relevant to the product — Adaptability, Capability, Manageability, Reliability and Usability — and two related to the vendor — TCO/ROI and Validation. To arrive at the Value Index rating for a given vendor, we weighted each category to reflect its relative importance in an RFP process, with the weightings based on our experience and on data derived from our market research, including our Benchmark Research on Analytics and Data.

Databricks initially targeted data engineers, data scientists and developers for big data and machine learning (ML) workloads. In recent years, Databricks has added support for more traditional data warehousing and BI workloads as well as data governance capabilities, with the platform also offering functionality targeted at data analysts and data management professionals. As Databricks is focused specifically on analytic data workloads, it was only included in our Analytic Data Platforms Value Index.

In the Analytic Data Platforms Value Index, Databricks was categorized as a Vendor of Assurance, ranking 10th overall in this Value Index evaluation. It ranked 10th in Product Experience, where it was designated a Value Index Leader in the Usability category. It ranked second in Customer Experience and was a Value Index Leader in the TCO/ROI category. Its overall performance was impacted by its lower rankings in the Manageability and Adaptability categories, which represent 30% of the weighting in the overall Value Index.

Our assessment finds that Databricks could improve by delivering advanced database administrator and data architect functionality in the Capability category, as well as additional business integration in Adaptability.

This assessment was based on Databricks’ data platform products generally available as of September 30, 2022.

Organizations should evaluate their data platform requirements for operational and analytic workloads to ensure the existing products and vendors are meeting their needs. If their current data platforms are not satisfying those requirements, they should consider whether Databricks can help meet their needs.

This research-based index is the most comprehensive assessment of the value of data platforms in the industry. Technology buyers can learn more about how to use our Value Index by clicking here and included vendors that wish to learn more can click here. Click below to read the individual reports:

Data Platforms Value Index

Analytic Data Platforms Value Index

Operational Data Platforms Value Index