Given its massive total addressable market estimated in the tens of billions of dollars, the rise of data platforms was inevitable.

It’s no surprise that every vendor with a data-related offering is vying for a piece of that lucrative market. But how comparable are the different approaches that exist on the market today? Before diving deep into the details, it’s important to define what one means when referring to data platforms, according to theCUBE industry analyst Rob Strechay (pictured).

To the team at theCUBE, a data platform provides built-in virtualization tools and the ability to programmatically use data through SQL queries and programmatic APIs, such as RESTful APIs. It should also provide the ability to programmatically extract, transform and load that data to and from the data warehouse, data lake and programmatic object storage or access data protocols, such as Open Database Connectivity or Java Database Connectivity.

“You need to be able to use the data once you get it to where it is,” Strechay said. “Essentially, a data platform is a comprehensive solution that not only stores data, but also offers APIs for data ingestion, methods for data processing addresses data governance — that’s a really important one now — and ensures scalability and performance, because you want to use it at cloud scale no matter where you are. It can delivered as build-your-own platform or as a service.”

Strechay discussed data platforms — and why you should care about them — as part of the new Analyst ANGLE series from theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio.

The market is responding

Most options offer all types of storage — object, file, block — all in a single scalable platform. These object offerings provide programmatic (usually S3 API or RESTful API access) to that data. But it’s important to remember that platforms also come with various weaknesses, according to Strechay.

“Most do not have data warehouse, data lake or data mesh environments installed out of the box in their storage systems, leaving it up to the customer to figure out or buy yet another product from that company to overlay on top of their storage foundation,” he said. “This again becomes a, ‘I need to build it myself but at a very different level.’ And this is also changing, however. I think that’s the exciting part.”

The market is starting to take note of what data platforms are doing — and recognizing that clouds are bringing simplicity and customer experience, according to Strechay. For example, HPE Ezmeral leverages open-source and data mesh technology, such as Presto, while Portworx by Pure Storage Inc. provides an open-source catalog and pipelines on top of Pure Storage.

“This is going to be quickly evolving. And if I had to put a pin in anything here, this is the space I would really be watching, because I think you’re going to start to see a lot of blurring of the lines between storage and data platforms over the coming months,” Strechay said. “I definitely think into the back half of the year, these are going to be compelling offerings that you may want to take a look at, in addition to what you’re doing with people like Snowflake and Databricks.”

Here’s the complete Analyst ANGLE segment:

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