ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico, Dec. 08, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Ilum, an open-source-centric data platform, announced today its recognition in G2’s Winter 2026 Reports. The company achieved top-three placement in 49 reports, including 18 first-place, 19 second-place, and 12 third-place rankings. These results highlight the platform's position in the data engineering and analytics market, validating the effectiveness of an infrastructure-agnostic, open-source approach regarding user experience and deployment speed.
Ilum Data Platform placed in the Top 3 in 49 G2 Winter 2026 Reports
Key Highlights from G2 Winter 2026:
- Market Coverage: Ilum placed in the Top 3 in over 47% of featured reports, indicating stability and breadth across Data Engineering, Analytics, and MLOps sectors.
- #1 in Enterprise Usability and Results Index: The platform topped the charts for Data Governance and Big Data Integration Platforms. This ranking suggests that the platform's unified control plane effectively addresses the complexity of Kubernetes and hybrid cloud operations.
- #2 in Big Data Analytics and ETL Enterprise Implementation Index: Ilum ranked second in this index, positioned directly between established industry giants, signaling a competitive time-to-value ratio for enterprise customers.
- #2 in Enterprise Usability Index for Data Warehouse: The platform was recognized alongside other major cloud providers as a top solution in the data warehouse area.
"For too long, enterprises believed they had to choose between the freedom of open source and the usability of a managed walled garden" said Ilum's Chief Executive Officer. "Securing 18 #1 rankings and 49 Top-3 finishes serves as empirical proof that this approach works. Ilum provides a sophisticated, cost-aware control plane that renders Day-2 operations consistent."
Redefining the Modern Data Stack
Ilum’s architecture is designed to bridge the gap between complex open-source tools and enterprise requirements. By functioning as a unified control plane, the platform manages compute engines across any infrastructure and ties them into a coherent data lakehouse.
Whether running on-premise, in the cloud, or in a hybrid environment, Ilum abstracts the complexity of Kubernetes. It allows data teams to create virtual clusters, assign strict resource limits, and schedule jobs without deep DevOps expertise. On the data side, Ilum supports structured patterns such as the Medallion architecture as one of the approaches teams can adopt: zones, catalogs, and lineage views make it easier to define ingestion, refinement, and consumption layers in a consistent way.
This combination of operational control and architectural guidance means organizations can modernize their legacy Hadoop environments or scale cloud-native architectures at their own pace, without vendor lock-in and without giving up open formats and tools.
Driving Success: FinOps and Cost Intelligence
Ilum’s focus on operational reality is a primary driver for these rankings. Unlike platforms that simply report on historical billing, Ilum’s integrated Cost Analysis and Recommendation Engine offers proactive intelligence.
The system monitors current cluster usage and analyzes the resource consumption of individual jobs. It then recommends specific configuration changes to optimize performance and limit daily cluster spend. This "FinOps-by-design" approach allows organizations to predict and control costs before they spiral, a critical capability for CFOs in the current economic climate.
Automated Data Lineage and Governance
The platform's #1 ranking in the Data Governance sector is powered by its "zero-configuration" approach to compliance. As data moves through the platform, whether a table is created, modified, or read, Ilum automatically tracks its lineage.
Users can visualize this journey through Entity Relationship Diagrams (ERDs) and detailed column-level lineage graphs. Additionally, the platform tracks table versions, allowing teams to view differences between versions and audit changes over time. This automation significantly reduces the manual burden of compliance and ensures that data integrity is maintained across the entire lifecycle.
About Ilum: Ilum is a next-generation data platform designed for the modern open-source stack. Built on Apache Spark and supporting Trino and DuckDB, the company provides a unified environment for SQL analytics, notebook-based data science, and AI/MLOps. With deep native integration for Kubernetes and a focus on operational excellence, Ilum empowers organizations to take control of their data infrastructure while optimizing costs and ensuring governance.
Contact Information:
Stan Ross
Head of Growth
Ilum Labs LLC
1209 Mountain Road Pl NE, Ste N,
Albuquerque, NM 87110
stan.ross@ilum.cloud
A video accompanying this announcement is available at: https://www.youtube.com/embed/zaZc2ZSkhzE
