Data discovery

Data discovery is a business intelligence architecture aimed at interactive reports and explorable data from multiple sources. According to the American information technology research and advisory firm Gartner "Data discovery has become a mainstream architecture in 2012".^[1]

Definition

Data Discovery is a user-driven process of searching for patterns or specific items in a data set. Data Discovery applications use visual tools such as geographical maps, pivot-tables, and heat-maps to make the process of finding patterns or specific items rapid and intuitive. Data Discovery may leverage statistical and data mining techniques to accomplish these goals.

Data Discovery and Business Intelligence (BI)

Data Discovery is a type of business intelligence in that they both provide the end-user with an application that visualizes data. Traditional BI covered dashboards, static and parameterized reports, and pivot tables. Visualization of data in traditional BI incorporated standard charting, KPI's, and limited graphical representation and interactivity. BI is undergoing transformation in capabilities it offers, with a focus on; end-user data analysis and discovery, access to larger volumes of data, and an ability to create high fidelity presentations of information. A focus of these new forms of BI is enabling end-users to do most of the work for themselves, with limited support from IT.

Departmental and Enterprise Perspectives

Data Discovery vendors began making inroads into the BI market by capitalizing on pent-up demand from business users desire to perform their own data analysis and reporting. The BI mantra of "Single Source of Truth" with centralized governance and control was being perceived as a failed approach to BI. With that void in the BI software market, Data Discovery vendors emerged with the strategy to "Land and Expand" by serving departmental business users, and then expanding into other departments. The focus of offerings was tailored to business user enablement via high-fidelity user experience and interaction. Less focus on traditional architectural 'ilities' and centralized control and governance. As Data Discovery vendors mature their offerings, they are beginning to focus on their customers governance needs. In 2015, the state of governance in these platforms is still in its infancy, but if the self-serve metaphor for these platforms is kept true, we will see croud-sourced governance enablement, where business users self-organize around information topics and enforce standards. From an architectural perspective, Data Discovery vendors will need to put more engineering into the architectural 'ilities' to reduce TCO for their expanding footprint in the enterprises they inhabit.

Players

Data Discovery vendors include; Tableau, Qlik, Tibco Spotfire, MicroStrategy, SAP (Lumira), Platfora, Datameer, ClearStory Data, and Datawatch.^[2]

See also

• Business intelligence
• Business intelligence tools

References

• The Rise of Data Discovery Has Set the Stage for a Major Strategic Shift in the BI and Analytics Platform Market

15 June 2015 G00277789 Analyst(s): Josh Parenteau | Rita L. Sallam | Cindi Howson