Although vendor M&A and AI-related enhancements lead many Customer Data Platform headlines, the most important trend sweeping the CDP market is the evolution of "hybrid-composable" architectures that support lakehouse-based data stores along with additional services for real-time activation, according to new research released today by independent MarTech analyst firm, Real Story Group.

This conclusion follows the release of fourteen CDP vendor evaluation updates from RSG: Acquia, Acoustic, ActionIQ, Adobe, Amperity, BlueConic, Blueshift, Lytics, mParticle, Optimove, Redpoint Global, Salesforce, Tealium, and Treasure Data.

Hybrid-composable architectures enable vendors to leverage, to varying degrees, existing investments in customer data management within enterprise lakehouses, while still enabling true marketer self-service over key capabilities like segmentation and event triggers.

RSG found that this evolution also takes some of the wind out of the sails of "Reverse ETL" vendors, whose ambitions to compete directly against full-blown CDP solutions are based almost solely on lakehouse intimacy.

While many CDP vendors have delivered AI-based productivity enhancements, most CDP systems remain downstream from lakehouse-centered machine learning initiatives, and therefore become more of a consumer of advanced intelligence than a creator of new insights. This may change as CDP vendors increasingly target more mid-market firms with less developed data ops capabilities.

"Almost every CDP vendor has a composable story now," notes RSG vice-president, Apoorv Durga, "although they differ widely in scope and maturity, and as usual, the major MarTech suite players have been slower to adapt."

RSG principal Scott Simmons adds, "Each year sees a handful of CDP acquisitions, as you would expect of a maturing marketplace, but the bigger story underneath those waves is continuing vendor adaptation as enterprises increasingly see customer data management and leverage as a multidimensional challenge."