For most organizations that are not committed to developing a proprietary data platform, the approach most likely to succeed is adopting a full-featured commercial or open-source data platform. Focus your internal development efforts on producing rich applications using platform features in unique and creative ways that add business value. A great data platform may even allow experienced developers to design solutions beyond what the core system developers anticipated.

More organizations understand the importance of extracting insights from data. In response, the open-source and commercial software industries have responded with a growing array of products and services that are marketed under the data platform umbrella. These products include:

• Cloud data platforms
• Big data platforms
• Data management platforms
• Data analytics platforms
• And more

Evaluating whether your organization would benefit from investing in a data platform and then choosing an approach, can be a complex endeavor given the variety of overlapping and competing options. Before starting that journey, it is useful to examine the potential benefits that can make the time and cost of evaluation worthwhile.