A new report from Conduktor said adoption is soaring, but so are fragmentation woes as most companies bolt on ever more tools without stopping to tidy the mess. The study found that 93 per cent of senior IT and data executives now juggle multi-platform data streaming architectures, and that 77 per cent use more platforms than they did two years ago.
Data streaming has become the plumbing that links sprawling systems, sharpens decision-making and gives developer teams a fighting chance of keeping up with demand. It is also fast becoming the backbone of corporate AI plans, although many firms still lack the governance, observability and quality controls needed to keep everything grafting smoothly.
The survey quizzed 200 senior executives at large outfits earning at least $50 million a year and employing more than 500 staff. Only 16 per cent have managed to prune their setup to a single streaming platform, and seven per cent use fewer tools than in 2023.
Conduktor chief executive Nicolas Orban said: “Although most respondents report a greater use of data streaming (especially for powering AI with real-time operational data), the unchecked spread of data streaming platforms can create problems for organisations. This forces companies to consolidate platforms to reduce architectural complexity, lower costs, and simplify governance.”
He said organisations must take governance, performance and security seriously from the outset if they want proper returns.
Market researcher Dataintelo valued the streaming data processing system software market at about $9.5 billion in 2023 and expects it to hit roughly $23.8 billion by 2032 with a compound annual growth rate of 10.8 per cent.
The firm said: “The surge in the need for real-time data processing capabilities, driven by the exponential growth of data from various sources such as social media, IoT devices, and enterprise data systems, is a significant growth factor for this market.”
Corporate hunger for real-time insight keeps swelling, yet most are still lugging around too many platforms and not enough discipline to keep them from tripping over their own cables.