EDB named Forrester Leader in multimodel data platforms

EDB has been named a Leader in Forrester's Multimodel Data Platforms evaluation for Q2 2026 for its EDB Postgres AI platform.

The platform received the highest possible scores in the Vision, Innovation, Roadmap and Partner Ecosystem criteria. Forrester also described EDB as "a strong choice for enterprises that need open source flexibility and deployment options to manage mixed translytical and AI workload demands."

The result places EDB in a closely watched part of the database market, where suppliers are trying to bring transactional, analytical and AI work together on a single platform. The shift reflects growing pressure on corporate technology teams to reduce the sprawl of specialist systems while keeping data close to the applications and models that use it.

EDB says its Postgres-based platform is designed to extend transactional workloads into analytical and AI processing within a single architecture. It positions that approach for organisations that want to run systems on premises, in hybrid settings or across multiple clouds while retaining tighter control over data location and governance.

Market shift

Multimodel data platforms have drawn more attention as companies look for alternatives to repeatedly moving data between operational databases, analytics stacks and AI tools. Vendors increasingly argue that separate estates create higher operating costs, more integration work and greater governance risks, particularly for regulated sectors and businesses with national data residency requirements.

For EDB, the recognition follows a recent product update that added agentic database and converged analytics functions, with governance features available in preview. The company says those additions made database tuning up to 10 times faster and reduced analytics total cost of ownership by as much as 58%.

Those claims point to one of the market's central commercial questions: whether database providers can persuade customers that a broader platform can replace a patchwork of tools without sacrificing performance, flexibility or control. The emphasis on open source also matters, as buyers weigh concerns about vendor lock-in against the appeal of integrated platforms.

EDB builds its offering on Postgres, the open source database that has become a widely adopted foundation for enterprise applications. That gives the company a position in a market where many customers want the economics and portability of open source software, but still need commercial support, managed deployment options and a roadmap that extends into AI workloads.

Product focus

According to EDB, Postgres AI is intended to unify transactional, analytical and AI workloads on one platform. The system supports deployment on premises, in hybrid environments and across clouds, with backing from partners including Dell, IBM, NVIDIA, Red Hat and Supermicro.

The partner list matters because infrastructure choices often shape database buying decisions as much as software features do. Hardware providers, cloud operators and systems integrators all influence how quickly new data architectures move from pilot projects into production.

Forrester's assessment highlighted EDB's vision, roadmap and ecosystem. EDB says the report pointed to research and development centred on inferencing, analytics and AI-driven automation, alongside a roadmap spanning GPU-accelerated workloads, semantic intelligence, governance and knowledge graph functions.

That language underscores how database vendors are trying to reposition themselves in the AI stack. Rather than serving only as systems of record, they are trying to become execution layers for analytics and machine intelligence, especially as businesses look for ways to run AI closer to core operational data.

Kevin Dallas, Chief Executive Officer of EDB, commented on the ranking.

"This recognition reflects what we've been building toward: a platform where intelligence moves to the data, not the other way around," said Kevin Dallas, Chief Executive Officer of EDB. "In the agentic era, AI runs on the data layer-governed, sovereign, and enforced at the source. We believe being named a Leader validates that the future of enterprise AI is open, sovereign, and built on Postgres."

EDB has also made sovereign deployment a central part of its pitch, arguing that organisations want more direct control over how AI systems access and use sensitive information. That theme has gained traction as companies face stricter oversight on privacy, security and data handling while still trying to deploy AI across internal operations.

The ranking is likely to strengthen EDB's case with large enterprises considering whether to standardise more of their data and AI workloads around PostgreSQL-based infrastructure. It also adds competitive pressure in a database market where suppliers are increasingly judged not only on transaction processing, but on how well they support analytics, governance and AI from the same data layer.

Forrester said EDB is "a strong choice for enterprises that need open source flexibility and deployment options to manage mixed translytical and AI workload demands."