Enterprises migrate to real-time data processing, analytics to support decision-making by AI agents, new research says

STAMFORD, Conn.: $III #AI--Enterprises increasingly are adopting real-time data processing as a foundational tool for AI-enabled automation, according to new research from global AI-centered technology research and advisory firm Information Services Group (ISG) (Nasdaq: III).

The 2026 ISG Buyers Guides™ for Real-Time Data provide the rankings and ratings of 58 software providers and their products for streaming and analysis of real-time data and events. The series includes Buyers Guides covering real-time data processing, streaming data and analytics, plus application integration for real-time interoperability. The research finds that real-time data processing has evolved from a niche capability to a core component of enterprise operations as companies adopt AI agents for immediate, automated decision-making.

“For enterprises to stay competitive, the technology they deploy must operate at the speed of business, understanding and acting on events as they occur,” said Kathy Rudy, ISG partner and head of the Data, Analytics & Technology Office. “Real-time data is essential for generating maximum value from AI agents.”

Enterprises are migrating from traditional batch-oriented data processing to real-time approaches so they can respond to events as they happen. While real-time data systems have been used for years in industries with high-performance requirements, such as financial services and telecommunications, they are now becoming essential in mainstream use cases to process, analyze and share messages generated by applications, devices and agents. As AI, streaming platforms and event-driven architectures converge, real-time data processing creates new possibilities for operational responsiveness, AI-driven decision-making and more intelligent applications.

For AI agents to autonomously carry out business processes, they need to act on the latest business events and data, which requires agentic systems to be integrated with data streaming and event processing. The combination of AI with real-time data processing is only beginning, but ISG expects more than one-third of enterprises to integrate data streaming and processing with AI and generative AI inferencing by 2028 to enable real-time agentic applications.

Real-time data is made up of events, or changes of state, such as a sensor identifying a new temperature reading. Once used for point-to-point communication between applications, it is now at the heart of business processes that involve multiple applications. Application integration, which increasingly relies on APIs and agent-driven automation, is essential to carrying out these processes.

Stream processing enables applications to ingest, filter, aggregate and transform large volumes of data in motion using stream analytics, which can create visualizations and support machine learning and GenAI. This capability is becoming so central to enterprise operations that traditional data processing providers are adding support for processing of real-time data streams, while streaming and event specialists are improving their support for event data stored in data warehouses.

“To make the best use of streaming data, enterprises need to holistically manage data both in motion and at rest,” said Matt Aslett, ISG director of research, analytics and data, and author of the report. “By 2028, we expect more than three-quarters of enterprises to adopt standard information architectures that include streaming data and event processing.”

For the 2026 ISG Buyers Guides for Products, ISG produced five Buyers Guides: Real-Time Data, Real-Time Data Emerging Providers, Application Integration, Streaming Analytics and Streaming Data. Each covers the essential platform categories and products in the given technology segment. A total of 58 providers were assessed: Actian, Adeptia, Aiven, Alibaba Cloud, AWS, Axway, Boomi, Broadcom, Celigo, Cleo, ClickHouse, Cloud Software Group, Cloudera, Conduktor, Confluent, Cumulocity, Databricks, Frends, Google Cloud, Gravitee, GridGain, Hazelcast, Huawei Cloud, IBM, Imply, InfluxData, Jitterbit, Kinetica, Kurrent, KX, Materialize, Microsoft, MongoDB, Oracle, Palantir, Patchworks, PhoenixAI, Qlik, Qubole, Red Hat, Redis, Redpanda, Safe Software, Salesforce, SAP, SAS, SEEBURGER, ServiceNow, Siemens, SnapLogic, Solace, StarTree, StreamNative, Striim, Tencent Cloud, Tray.ai, Workato and Zapier.

ISG rates software providers in five evaluation categories: Overall, Product Experience, Capability, Platform and Customer Experience. Providers ranked in the top three for each evaluation category are named as Leaders. Within each platform category, those that meet the greatest proportion of our evaluation criteria are named as Overall Leaders.

In the Buyers Guide for Real-Time Data, AWS was the top Overall Leader, followed by Microsoft and Oracle. This guide also includes ratings of messaging and event processing providers. In the Buyers Guide for Real-Time Data Emerging Providers, Redpanda was the top Overall Leader, followed by Striim and StreamNative.

In the Buyers Guide for Application Integration, Boomi was the top Overall Leader, followed by Oracle and AWS.

Databricks and AWS were the top two Overall Leaders in the Buyers Guide for Streaming Analytics, followed by Oracle. They were also the top Overall Leaders in the guide for Streaming Data, followed by Microsoft.

In addition, the following providers were rated as Exemplary or Innovative in each of the Buyers Guides:

Real-Time Data: AWS, Cloudera, Databricks, Google Cloud, Huawei Cloud, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and Salesforce were rated Exemplary. Alibaba Cloud, Cloud Software Group and Confluent were rated Innovative.

Messaging and Event Processing: AWS, Cloudera, Confluent, Google Cloud, IBM, Microsoft, Salesforce and Solace were rated Exemplary. Tencent Cloud was rated Innovative.

Real-Time Data Emerging Providers: Hazelcast, InfluxData, Materialize, Qubole, Redpanda and Striim were rated Exemplary. GridGain, Kinetica and StreamNative were rated Innovative.

Application Integration: AWS, Boomi, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce (Informatica), Salesforce (MuleSoft), SAP, ServiceNow and Solace were rated Exemplary. Axway and SnapLogic were rated Innovative.

Streaming Analytics: AWS, Alibaba Cloud, Confluent, Databricks, Google Cloud, Huawei Cloud, Microsoft and Oracle were rated Exemplary. ClickHouse, Cloud Software Group and Palantir were rated Innovative.

Streaming Data: AWS, Cloudera, Confluent, Databricks, Google Cloud, Huawei Cloud, IBM, Microsoft and MongoDB were rated Exemplary. Alibaba Cloud, Cloud Software Group, Palantir and Redis were rated Innovative.

The ISG Buyers Guides for Real-Time Data are the distillation of more than a year of market and product research efforts. The research is not sponsored nor influenced by software providers and is conducted solely to help enterprises optimize their business and IT software investments.

Visit this webpage to learn more about the ISG Buyers Guides for Real-Time Data and read executive summaries of each of the five reports. The complete reports, including provider rankings across seven product and customer experience dimensions and detailed research findings on each provider, are available by contacting ISG.

About ISG

ISG (Nasdaq: III) is a global AI-centered technology research and advisory firm. A trusted partner to more than 900 clients, including 75 of the world’s top 100 enterprises, ISG is a long-time leader in technology and business services that is now at the forefront of leveraging AI to help organizations achieve operational excellence and faster growth. The firm, founded in 2006, is known for its proprietary market data and research, in-depth knowledge and governance of provider ecosystems, and the expertise of its 1,500 professionals worldwide working together to help clients maximize the value of their technology investments.

Fonte: Business Wire