Forrester names Teradata a leader in data fabric for AI

Teradata has been named a leader in a major analyst assessment of data fabric platforms, underscoring growing competition in data infrastructure for AI and analytics.

Research firm Forrester placed Teradata in the leader segment of its report, The Forrester Wave: Data Fabric Platforms, Q4 2025. The evaluation examined 14 technology providers and scored them on their current offering, strategy and customer feedback.

Teradata said it received the highest possible score of 5 out of 5 in the Vision and Roadmap criteria. The company also recorded top scores in three Current Offering categories, including real-time performance and scalability.

The analyst report assessed vendors that provide unified data fabric platforms. These platforms sit across diverse data sources and environments and present an integrated layer for data management, governance and access.

Teradata positions its platform for large-scale analytics and AI across hybrid and multi-cloud deployments. The company has a long history in data warehousing and has been reshaping its software around cloud-based consumption and AI workloads.

AI and data fabric

The report appears as data fabric architectures gain attention among organisations that deploy AI systems across distributed estates. Data fabric approaches seek to connect structured and unstructured data across on-premises and cloud systems, with consistent policy and metadata.

Teradata said agentic AI is now influencing the direction of data fabric platforms. Agentic AI describes systems that pursue defined goals, make context-aware decisions and adjust their behaviour based on feedback.

The company said that when organisations combine such AI models with data intelligence, they can automate more of the underlying data orchestration. It said this includes tasks such as routing data to the right compute environment, applying data quality rules and enforcing governance policies in real time.

In the Forrester assessment, Teradata highlighted the role of its architecture in supporting complex analytics and AI use cases. The company said its performance and scalability scores reflect its work on large, distributed deployments.

Analyst assessment

Forrester's researchers evaluated each vendor against a common set of criteria in the Wave methodology. These criteria cover a vendor's product functionality, strategic direction and the feedback Forrester received from customer references.

In a comment within the report, Forrester described Teradata's positioning in demanding environments.

"Teradata's proven performance and robust architecture make it ideal for powering mission-critical analytical and AI workloads in complex, distributed environments." - The Forrester Wave: Data Fabric Platforms, Q4 2025, by Noel Yuhanna with Aaron Katz, Agnes Nkansah, Emily Doherty, Jen Barton.

Teradata said its scores in the Vision and Roadmap categories reflect its investment focus. The company has been adding features that address governance, performance and multi-cloud deployments as enterprises move more analytical workloads into the cloud.

Vendors in the data fabric segment include traditional database providers, cloud-native data platforms and integration specialists. Competition has intensified as organisations look for consistent data management across multiple public clouds and on-premises clusters.

Customer priorities

Enterprises that evaluate data fabric platforms often look for support for both legacy data estates and modern cloud services. They also seek a single layer for policy management and security across regions and business units.

Teradata said its platform design targets these requirements through a focus on performance, scalability and governance features. It said this is relevant for industries such as financial services, telecommunications and the public sector, which operate under strict regulatory and availability demands.

The company has also been aligning its roadmap with the rapid uptake of AI in these sectors. That includes support for analytics models that run across multiple data sources and locations.

Sumeet Arora, Chief Product Officer at Teradata, said recognition in the report aligns with the company's product strategy.

"We believe being named a Leader in The Forrester Wave: Data Fabric Platforms reflects our commitment to helping enterprises operationalise trusted, AI-driven decisioning across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Our focus remains on delivering performance, scalability, and governance so customers can confidently accelerate innovation with data and AI," said Arora.

The full Forrester report is available through the firm's subscription and purchase channels, and will inform technology buyers that plan data platform investments over the coming planning cycles.