Application platforms provide runtime environments for application logic. They manage the life cycle of an application or application component, and ensure the availability, reliability, scalability, security and monitoring of application logic. They typically support distributed application deployments across multiple nodes. Some also support cloud-style operations (elasticity, multitenancy and self-service).
Data and Analytics refers to products and services that enable organizations to collect, integrate, analyze, and act on data to drive informed decision-making and business outcomes. This category includes markets that focus on empowering enterprises to manage data pipelines, ensure data quality and governance, extract insights through advanced analytics, and machine learning across structured and unstructured data environments.
A digital integration hub (DIH) is an architectural pattern that centralizes data from various sources to provide a scalable, and real-time layer for modern digital applications, especially beneficial for enterprises looking to transform to digitized sales processes. It aggregates data from multiple systems of record into a low-latency, high-performance data store (the data management layer) which is then accessed by sales force automation (SFA), sales enablement and other tools via APIs or events. It also provides a central layer of abstraction that decouples applications from underlying systems, making it easier to integrate and manage new data sources and applications without disrupting existing systems. DIH provides sales teams with rich and responsive access to massive data sources, limits the fees paid to API providers and helps enable 24/7 operations enhancing customer experience through self service, digital commerce and loyalty.
Enterprise search engines are specialized search tools designed to help organizations index, search, and retrieve information stored within their internal data repositories. Unlike general web search engines that index and search the entire internet, enterprise search engines focus on the internal data of an organization, which can include documents, emails, databases, intranet sites, and other digital assets or data sources. Modern enterprise search engines often incorporate Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML) and AI-powered technologies to enhance their capabilities and improve the search experience. This type of search engine is adept at handling both structured and unstructured data, making it invaluable for diverse use cases such as knowledge management, customer support, and business intelligence. By integrating these enterprise search software capabilities, organizations can ensure that employees have quick and relevant access to the information they need, thereby improving productivity and decision-making.
The market for ESP platforms consists of software subsystems that perform real-time computation on streaming event data. They execute calculations on unbounded input data continuously as it arrives, enabling immediate responses to current situations and/or storing results in files, object stores or other databases for later use. Examples of input data include clickstreams; copies of business transactions or database updates; social media posts; market data feeds; images; and sensor data from physical assets, such as mobile devices, machines and vehicles.
Gartner defines Insight Engines as follows: Insight engines apply relevancy methods to discover, analyze, describe and organize content and data. They enable the interactive or proactive delivery or synthesis of information to people, and data to machines, in the context of their respective business moments. Insight engines should be viewed as platforms on which applications are provided, developed or augmented by applying the capabilities listed above to specific employee and customer experience use cases. Such applications are provided out of the box by vendors (e.g., intranet or site search), developed through technical partnerships (e.g., search within third-party applications), developed with customers in-house (e.g., expert finder), or developed through integration with third-party applications (e.g., extracting data from documents to support RPA).