Gartner® Report: Are Data Fabric and Data Mesh the Same or Different?

Data Fabric and Data Mesh represent two distinct yet complementary approaches in modern data management, each offering unique benefits to organizations seeking efficient and cost-effective data solutions. Data Fabric focuses on modernizing data integration and centralization through technology utilization and implementation design, often incorporating AI and machine learning to enhance its capabilities. In contrast, Data Mesh emphasizes a distributed architecture for building business-centric data products, allowing for decentralized governance and management of data directly within source systems. While Data Fabric demands significant technological investment, particularly in tools and platforms, Data Mesh shifts the cost focus toward services, making both approaches adaptable depending on an organization's specific needs and cloud strategies. Both paradigms have evolved from decades of data management advancements and can coexist to enhance data strategy and performance, as highlighted in Gartner's research, which explores the nuanced differences and potential synergies between them.