Enterprises Align AI and Data Platforms to Scale AI Deployments with Accuracy, Compliance, ISG says
Companies seek tools to build and maintain cohesive systems for real-time, relevant, personalized AI results, new research says
The 2026 ISG Buyers Guides™ for AI and Data Platforms provide the rankings and ratings of 83 software providers and their products for using and managing AI models and data in an enterprise. The series includes Buyers Guides covering established and emerging providers of AI platforms, including AI agents and sovereign AI and data solutions, and Buyers Guides for established and emerging providers of data platforms. The research finds that many companies attempting to scale AI deployments struggle with siloed, inconsistent and inaccessible data that needs to be cleaned, organized and made compliant with regulations.
“As organizations take AI programs beyond experimentation, they need enterprise-grade software to build and maintain both AI models and the data those models use,” said
Enterprises seek AI platforms that enable them to prepare, train, deploy and maintain AI models efficiently and accurately, the research finds. This includes accessing and preparing data used to build, compare and optimize models and apply governance and monitoring frameworks to ensure compliance. Companies implementing AI look to data platforms to maintain data validity and trust. As AI use cases demand higher volumes of data, raising infrastructure costs, coordination between AI and data platforms is essential for efficiency.
The growing need for real-time, personalized and contextually relevant results from applications is blurring the line between AI and data platforms, ISG finds. To provide results that may include pricing, recommendations, fraud detection and forecasting, applications now need continuous access to both data and analytical models. This has led enterprises to move away from batch-oriented analytic processes, which extract and load data from operational systems into separate analytics platforms, and toward using operational data platforms that can perform AI inferencing at scale.
Rapid adoption of generative and agentic AI is changing enterprise expectations for both AI and data platforms, the research finds. Data platform requirements have grown to include the storage and processing of vector embeddings, which help to enable natural language processing and make GenAI more accurate through retrieval-augmented generation. ISG expects data platform providers to prioritize development of hybrid operational and analytic processing for GenAI and agentic AI through 2028.
For the 2026 ISG Buyers Guides™ for AI and Data Platforms, ISG produced seven Buyers Guides: AI and Data Platforms, AI Platforms, AI Platforms Emerging Providers, AI Agents, Sovereign AI and Data, Data Platforms and Data Platforms Emerging Providers. Each covers the essential platform categories and products in the given technology segment. A total of 83 providers were assessed: Actian,
For its Buyers Guide to AI Platforms, ISG evaluated software providers across three platform categories — AI Platforms, Agentic and Generative AI and AI Governance and Operations.
For the Buyers Guide to Data Platforms, ISG evaluated software providers across three platform categories: Data Platforms, Analytic Data Platforms and Operational Data Platforms.
ISG rates software providers in five evaluation categories: Overall, Product Experience (incorporating Capability and Platform) and Customer Experience. Providers ranked in the top three for each evaluation category are named as Leaders. Within each platform category, those that meet the greatest proportion of our evaluation criteria are named as Overall Leaders.
Oracle was named the top Overall Leader in all AI and data platform categories that evaluated established providers. Other providers named as Overall Leaders within these platform categories were
In the Buyers Guide for AI Platforms Emerging Providers,
In addition, the following providers were rated as Exemplary or Innovative:
AI and Data Platforms: AWS,
AI Platforms: AWS,
Agentic and Generative AI: AWS,
AI Governance and Operations: AWS,
AI Platforms Emerging Providers:
AI Agents:
Sovereign AI and Data: AWS,
Data Platforms: AWS,
Analytic Data Platforms: AWS,
Operational Data Platforms: AWS,
Data Platforms Emerging Providers:
“Enterprises can no longer afford fragmented approaches to AI and data. They need comprehensive strategies to ensure their AI investments deliver useful, accurate results,” said
The ISG Buyers Guides™ for AI and Data Platforms are the distillation of more than a year of market and product research efforts. The research is not sponsored nor influenced by software providers and is conducted solely to help enterprises optimize their business and IT software investments.
Visit this webpage to learn more about the ISG Buyers Guides™ for AI and Data Platforms and read the executive summaries of each report. The complete reports, including provider rankings across seven product and customer experience dimensions and detailed research findings on each provider, are available by contacting ISG.
About ISG
ISG (Nasdaq: III) is a global AI-centered technology research and advisory firm. A trusted partner to more than 900 clients, including 75 of the world’s top 100 enterprises, ISG is a long-time leader in technology and business services that is now at the forefront of leveraging AI to help organizations achieve operational excellence and faster growth. The firm, founded in 2006, is known for its proprietary market data and research, in-depth knowledge and governance of provider ecosystems, and the expertise of its 1,500 professionals worldwide working together to help clients maximize the value of their technology investments.
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