The adoption rate of data quality (DQ) software tools is expected to grow by 20% - 30% annually during the next three to five years, according to the latest 'Vendor & Technology Evaluation' report from technology research firm, META Group. Data quality tools are prominent in CRM, ERP, and data warehousing applications.
According to META Group's report, managing data quality and consistency across the enterprise is a critical and growing issue for many organisations - particularly those currently faced with integration challenges from CRM, ERP, and data warehousing initiatives.
"Information should be considered part of the IT portfolio, and data quality solutions should be seen as a means to increase the value of that portfolio, in addition to reducing business risk and identifying business opportunity," said Doug Laney, lead author of the report, and vice president and director for META Group's technology research services division. "The data quality market will increasingly intersect with the data integration solution, compliance solution, business application, and e-commerce market."
Independent market
Laney predicts that data quality solutions will mature independently, improving their openness to integration with solutions in other markets. However, the breadth and depth of business rules used as a basis for data quality offerings are considerable barriers to entry, preventing vendors from building competitive offerings from scratch.
Since several of the leading DQ vendors are already subsidiaries of parent companies, users should not expect much consolidation within the market over the next few years. Instead, Laney says, niche players will come and go, continuing to chip away at the market by focusing on specific core functionality or by introducing related niche capabilities.
Key findings
META Group's data quality tools report evaluated eight vendors in the market, all offering various technologies for profiling, standardising, matching, cleansing, and enriching data to help ensure its accuracy, completeness, and integrity. The analysis found that:
- DQ tool buyers are expected to demonstrate a preference for market leaders, which will continue to include those with the strongest presence-oriented strategies, combined with the broadest array of capabilities.
- Leaders have stable, mature products with a deep, expanding knowledge-base of data matching and cleansing business rules.
- There is not much room for new market leaders to emerge until after 2005/06.
- Challengers are mainly characterised by their focus on a narrower scope of capabilities than the leaders. Legitimate challengers are able to offer core capabilities at attractive prices.
- 'Followers' strictly focus on Windows/NT platforms, offering only a small subset of overall DQ capabilities, whilst targeting smaller companies and pricing their offerings to slip beneath budget radars.
The analysis and report is based on META Group's METAspectrum methodology, which provides a framework for selecting and evaluating appropriate IT vendors and products for specific business initiatives.
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