Ten Data Integration Trends for 2010

As we begin both a New Year and new decade in 2010 it is a great time to discuss the significant trends impacting the data integration marketplace.

In a break from many trend lists, I am listing both positive and negative trends. It is important to look at the glass being half full and half empty to have a realistic assessment of where we are going. I certainly don’t want these negative trends to happen; maybe by discussing them we can help prevent them.

The global recession had a significant impact on IT projects throughout 2009. Despite these economic headwinds data integration spending still grew last year, illustrating its business value to many companies.

Data integration is not just a “nice to have” but a “must have”…

As we begin both a New Year and new decade in 2010 it is a great time to discuss the significant trends impacting the data integration marketplace.

In a break from many trend lists, I am listing both positive and negative trends. It is important to look at the glass being half full and half empty to have a realistic assessment of where we are going. I certainly don’t want these negative trends to happen; maybe by discussing them we can help prevent them.

The global recession had a significant impact on IT projects throughout 2009. Despite these economic headwinds data integration spending still grew last year, illustrating its business value to many companies.

Data integration is not just a “nice to have” but a “must have” to enable companies to examine and hopefully improve the top line (revenue) and bottom line (profit). Even though some have declared the recession over, business and consumer caution will restrain IT spending no matter how valuable it is.

Look for growth in data integration, but the economy and sentiment will have to rebound more significantly to get back to pre-recession double digit gains in data integration spending.

(Just so you know, Athena IT Solutions doesn’t sell (or resell) hardware or software, so these trends are not a disguised pitch for some product.)

The important trends in data integration this year:

1. The demand for data integration continues to exceed our ability to supply it
2. Data integration continues to splinter into two partisan groups
3. Enterprise-class data integration continues to expand beyond ETL and DW roots
4. MDM and CDI increasingly depend on enterprise-class DI expertise
5. ETL expands into SMB market
6. Data integration breaks out from the “Magic Quadrant”  (repeat)
7. ETL abuse and disillusionment is rampant with new adopters
8. Operational BI adopted because data integration is too tough
9. Battle for market share in SMBs and departmental ETL in large enterprises is between hand-coding and ETL tools
10. 1990s Redux, i.e. data silos proliferate… again

I’ll blog about all of these trends during the next few weeks.

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