We are happy to share some insights about Google 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. For each of the Value Indexes, we evaluated Google 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.
Google Cloud has a broad portfolio of data and analytics offerings that spans data storage and processing, data management and data governance, as well as analytics and machine learning (ML), including the flagship operational and analytic data platform offerings Google Cloud Spanner and Google BigQuery. Recently, the company has sought to provide a more coherent message by describing this portfolio as a unified data cloud.
In the overall Data Platforms Value Index, Google was categorized as a Vendor of Assurance, ranking seventh overall in this Value Index evaluation. It ranked eighth in Product Experience,
where it performed best in the Reliability category. It ranked sixth in Customer Experience and performed best in TCO/ROI. Its overall performance was impacted by its lower rankings in Usability and Manageability, which represent 25% of the weighting in the overall Value Index.
Our assessment finds that Google could improve accessibility, which was reflected in its seventh-place Usability ranking. In Capability, where it ranked seventh, it could examine improvements in core database and data architect functionality.
In the Analytic Data Platforms Value Index, Google was also categorized as a Vendor of Assurance, ranking eighth overall in this Value Index evaluation. It ranked ninth in Product Experience, where it ranked best in Reliability. It ranked seventh in Customer Experience and ranked best in TCO/ROI.
Google was categorized as an Exemplary Vendor in the Operational Data Platforms Value Index, ranking eighth overall in this Value Index evaluation. It ranked 10th in Product Experience, where it ranked best in the Reliability category. It ranked sixth in Customer Experience and ranked best in the TCO/ROI category.
This assessment was based on Google’s 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 Google 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:
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