Unified Data Platform
Your guide to the data platform world
Every major vendor calls itself a unified data platform. We wrote down what that ought to mean, then scored the five biggest against it — and the ones covering the most turned out to be the least unified.
Start here
There are two ways to build a data platform, and this site covers both.
Buying one platform
You want one vendor to cover most of it. Read what “unified” actually means, then compare the big platforms capability by capability, on the same rows, with a source behind every answer.
What counts as unified →Assembling a stack
You want the best tool for each job. Browse the landscape plane by plane — orchestration, storage, governance, AI — and put up to three tools side by side under the same headings.
Open the Data Tool Landscape →Whoever you are in the data world, there is something here for you
Five kinds of people use this site. Find yours, and start where it is most useful.
Data professionals
Make sense of the landscape. See who does what, layer by layer, then put up to three tools next to each other and read them against the same headings.
Open the Data Tool LandscapeEvent goers
Never miss the next one. Conferences, meetups and user groups across the UK, Europe and the USA, with the dates and prices checked against the organiser’s own page.
Find data eventsExperts and practitioners
Built something real? Come and talk about it on the podcast — a relaxed conversation about what actually worked, not a sales pitch.
Be a guestVendors
Put your product in front of data teams. Get profiled on the same neutral terms as everyone else, and demo it to practitioners rather than procurement.
Get listedEvent organisers
Fill the room. List your event in the directory, free and unpaid, or ask about a featured spot when you need a bigger push.
List an eventEveryone else
Get the newsletter: new comparisons, plain-English guides and upcoming data events. No spam, and you can unsubscribe any time.
Sign upHow this is different
Neutral by default
Listings are editorial and unpaid. Nobody buys a better write-up, and any sponsored placement will always be labelled as one.
Read from the source
Profiles are written from each vendor’s own published pages, never from a press release or a rival’s comparison. Where a vendor publishes nothing on a point, we say so rather than guessing.
Like for like
Tools in a category answer the same set of questions in the same order, so a comparison is a comparison rather than two marketing pages side by side.