Why a market map, and why now
Enterprise software used to sort itself into tidy categories, and buyers learned the map once. That map is being redrawn on two fronts at the same time. Consolidation is collapsing categories into platforms: in a single stretch of 2025 and 2026, Google agreed to buy Wiz, Palo Alto Networks agreed to buy CyberArk, Salesforce agreed to buy Informatica, and Akamai absorbed Noname. And AI search is changing how buyers even find these tools, with the shortlist increasingly forming inside an AI answer rather than on a results page (see AI Search Is Becoming the Default for B2B for the data on that shift).
This is a vendor-neutral map of 30 categories across six domains. For each one it gives a plain definition, the representative providers, the 2026 acquisition or platform shift that matters, and, where the category is one we cover in depth, a link to the ranked comparison. It is a snapshot, not a ranking: the goal is to show the shape of the field and where it is moving, so you can build a shortlist quickly and understand what a vendor's name now actually points to.
A note on how to read it. Where a name changed hands, the current owner is in parentheses. Where a category is converging into a larger platform, that is called out under "The 2026 shift." And where we maintain a deep, ranked buyer's comparison, follow the "Compare" link for verdicts, pricing, and honest weaknesses.
Cybersecurity
Security is the most consolidated domain on this map. Three platform gravities, secure access (SASE), cloud security (CNAPP), and identity, keep pulling adjacent point categories inward, so many of the tools below increasingly compete against suites as much as against each other.
1. SASE and Secure Access
Converged cloud networking and security: SD-WAN, secure web gateway, CASB, ZTNA, and firewall-as-a-service delivered from one cloud edge.
Representative providers: Zscaler, Palo Alto Networks (Prisma SASE), Netskope, Cato Networks, Cisco, Cloudflare, Fortinet, Check Point.
The 2026 shift: the single-vendor SASE thesis has largely won, and the remaining debate is security-led (Zscaler, Netskope) versus network-led (Cato, Fortinet) architectures.
Compare: Top 5 SASE Platforms of 2026 and, for the access layer specifically, Top 5 ZTNA Solutions.
2. Identity and Access Management (IAM)
Single sign-on, MFA, identity governance (IGA), and privileged and identity security across the workforce.
Representative providers: Okta, SailPoint, Microsoft Entra ID, CyberArk (Palo Alto Networks), Ping Identity, Saviynt, JumpCloud, Veza.
The 2026 shift: Palo Alto Networks' agreement to acquire CyberArk folded the privileged-access leader into a security platform, the clearest sign yet that identity is now a pillar of platform security rather than a standalone market. SailPoint returned to the public markets in 2025.
Compare: Top 10 IAM Solutions for 2026, Top 11 IGA Solutions, Top 10 PAM Solutions, and Top 10 CIAM Solutions.
3. API Security
Discovery, posture management, and runtime protection for APIs.
Representative providers: Salt Security, Akamai API Security (formerly Noname), Imperva, Cequence, Traceable (Harness), Wallarm, 42Crunch.
The 2026 shift: the independents are being absorbed. Akamai acquired Noname to build its API Security line, and Traceable was folded into Harness, leaving Salt Security as the most prominent remaining pure-play.
Compare: Top 5 API Security Testing Tools of 2026.
4. Cloud Security (CNAPP and CSPM)
Unified cloud-native protection spanning CSPM, CWPP, CIEM, and code-to-cloud.
Representative providers: Wiz (Google), Palo Alto Prisma and Cortex Cloud, CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Orca Security, Sysdig, Aqua Security, Uptycs.
The 2026 shift: Google's agreement to acquire Wiz, the largest deal in the category's history, validated CNAPP as strategic infrastructure and set off a scramble among the remaining independents to define what a standalone CNAPP is still for.
Compare: Top 10 CNAPP Solutions of 2026, with the sub-layers broken out in CSPM, CIEM, and container security.
5. Vulnerability and Exposure Management
Finding, prioritizing, and tracking vulnerabilities and exposure across the attack surface.
Representative providers: Tenable, Qualys, Rapid7, Wiz, CrowdStrike Falcon Exposure Management, Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management, Ivanti.
The 2026 shift: the framing moved from scanning to continuous threat and exposure management (CTEM), and the platform players (Wiz, CrowdStrike, Microsoft) now contest a market the scanning specialists once owned.
Compare: Top 10 Vulnerability Management Platforms of 2026, CTEM Platforms, and Attack Surface Management.
6. Bot Management
Detecting and mitigating automated bot traffic, scraping, and fraud abuse.
Representative providers: HUMAN Security, DataDome, Cloudflare Bot Management, Imperva, Akamai, Kasada, Netacea.
The 2026 shift: the surge in AI crawlers and scrapers pushed bot management from a fraud-adjacent concern to a front-line content and infrastructure control, blurring the line between bot defense and CDN.
7. Network Detection and Response (NDR)
Detecting threats through network traffic analysis and behavioral detection.
Representative providers: Vectra AI, Darktrace, ExtraHop, Corelight, Cisco (with Splunk), Arista (Awake), Fortinet.
The 2026 shift: NDR is increasingly sold as one signal inside a broader detection platform, with Cisco's Splunk acquisition the clearest example of network telemetry folding into a SIEM and observability story.
Compare: Top 5 NDR Tools of 2026, alongside SIEM and MDR.
8. Data Security and Privacy (DSPM)
Discovering, classifying, and protecting sensitive data, plus privacy-enhancing technology.
Representative providers: Cyera, Sentra, BigID, Varonis, Wiz DSPM, Securiti.
The 2026 shift: DSPM went from a feature to a category and back toward a feature, as CNAPP platforms (Wiz DSPM) and data-security incumbents (Varonis) both moved to own it, squeezing the pure-plays into a fast-funding race.
Compare: Top 10 DSPM Tools of 2026.
Data and Analytics
The data domain reorganized around a warehouse and lakehouse core, with governance, observability, and real-time analytics forming distinct sub-markets around it. The defining event of 2026 was Salesforce's agreement to acquire Informatica, which put a single owner across data integration and data governance at once.
9. Data Integration and iPaaS
Moving and syncing data between systems: integration, replication, and ELT.
Representative providers: MuleSoft (Salesforce), Boomi, Informatica (Salesforce), Workato, Fivetran, SnapLogic, Jitterbit.
The 2026 shift: Salesforce's agreement to acquire Informatica gave it both MuleSoft and Informatica, concentrating enterprise integration and adding a governance estate to the same portfolio.
10. Data Catalog and Governance
Metadata, lineage, glossary, and policy enforcement across the data estate.
Representative providers: Collibra, Alation, Atlan, Informatica (Salesforce), Microsoft Purview, DataHub (open source), OpenMetadata (open source).
The 2026 shift: governance stopped being a standalone purchase for many buyers as Microsoft Purview bundled it into the Microsoft estate and open-source catalogs (DataHub, OpenMetadata) took the mid-market, leaving the independents to compete on active, AI-ready metadata.
11. Data Observability
Monitoring data pipelines for freshness, quality, volume, and schema issues.
Representative providers: Monte Carlo, Acceldata, Bigeye, Soda, Anomalo, Metaplane, Datafold.
The 2026 shift: as pipelines feed AI systems, data observability is being repositioned as AI reliability tooling, with quality issues reframed as model-risk issues.
12. Graph Databases
Databases optimized for connected data and relationship queries.
Representative providers: Neo4j, Amazon Neptune, TigerGraph, ArangoDB, Memgraph, Ontotext.
The 2026 shift: graph found renewed demand as the backbone for GraphRAG and knowledge graphs behind AI applications, shifting the buyer from the data team to the AI team.
13. Analytics and Real-Time Databases
High-speed OLAP and real-time analytics engines.
Representative providers: ClickHouse, Apache Druid and Imply, Apache Pinot and StarTree, SingleStore, Rockset (OpenAI), Incorta.
The 2026 shift: OpenAI's acquisition of Rockset pulled a real-time analytics engine into the AI stack for retrieval, and ClickHouse's momentum made open-source OLAP the default starting point for new real-time workloads.
14. Cloud Data Warehouse and Lakehouse
Cloud-scale storage and compute for analytics and AI.
Representative providers: Snowflake, Databricks, Google BigQuery, Amazon Redshift, Microsoft Fabric and Synapse, Firebolt.
The 2026 shift: the warehouse-versus-lakehouse distinction all but dissolved as Snowflake and Databricks each grew into the other's territory, and the real contest became which platform owns the AI and agent workloads built on top of the data.
DevOps and Developer Tools
Developer tooling is where open source, cloud-provider bundling, and AI assistance collide. The through-line in 2026 is that observability and CI/CD both keep absorbing adjacent functions, while AI coding assistants (covered under AI, below) reshape how much of this work gets done at all.
15. Observability and Monitoring
Metrics, logs, and traces for infrastructure and applications (APM and monitoring).
Representative providers: Datadog, Dynatrace, Grafana Labs, New Relic, Splunk (Cisco), Elastic, Honeycomb, Sumo Logic.
The 2026 shift: Cisco's acquisition of Splunk reshaped the top of the market, and the pricing conversation shifted from per-host to data-volume economics as log costs became the dominant line item.
Compare: Top 5 Observability Platforms of 2026, and for AI systems specifically, LLM Observability Platforms.
16. API Development and Management
Building, testing, publishing, and governing APIs and gateways.
Representative providers: Postman, Kong, Apigee (Google), MuleSoft Anypoint (Salesforce), AWS API Gateway, Azure API Management, Tyk.
The 2026 shift: the API gateway is being reframed as the control point for AI and agent traffic, with the AI gateway emerging as an adjacent category on top of classic API management.
Compare: Top 5 API Management Platforms of 2026 and AI Gateways.
17. Software Testing and Test Automation
Automated testing across web, mobile, and APIs.
Representative providers: Playwright, Cypress, Selenium, BrowserStack, Sauce Labs, Tricentis, Katalon, LambdaTest.
The 2026 shift: Playwright became the default for new web automation, and the commercial value moved up-stack to AI-assisted test generation and self-healing suites rather than the runners themselves.
18. Incident Management and On-Call
Alerting, on-call scheduling, and incident response coordination.
Representative providers: PagerDuty, Atlassian Opsgenie, incident.io, xMatters, FireHydrant, Rootly, Splunk On-Call.
The 2026 shift: Atlassian's wind-down of Opsgenie in favor of Jira Service Management opened the mid-market, and a wave of modern challengers (incident.io, Rootly, FireHydrant) is competing on incident workflow and AI-assisted response rather than just paging.
19. CI/CD and Release Automation
Building, testing, and deploying software through pipelines.
Representative providers: GitHub Actions, GitLab, Jenkins, CircleCI, Harness, Argo CD, JFrog, Octopus Deploy.
The 2026 shift: the default moved to platform-native pipelines (GitHub Actions, GitLab), while the independent value concentrated in software delivery platforms (Harness, JFrog) that add governance, security, and cost intelligence on top of the pipeline.
Cloud and Infrastructure
Infrastructure buying in 2026 was dominated by the aftershocks of the Broadcom acquisition of VMware, which pushed customers to re-evaluate virtualization, hyperconverged infrastructure, and cloud cost at once.
20. Data Protection and Backup
Enterprise backup, recovery, and ransomware resilience across on-premises, cloud, and SaaS.
Representative providers: Veeam, Commvault, Rubrik, Cohesity, Druva, Dell (PowerProtect), Veritas, Acronis.
The 2026 shift: backup rebranded as cyber-resilience, with security features (anomaly detection, immutable copies, clean recovery) becoming the deciding factor. Commvault's acquisition of Clumio and Cohesity's merger with Veritas concentrated the field.
Compare: Top 5 Ransomware Backup and Recovery Solutions of 2026.
21. Hyperconverged Infrastructure and Private Cloud
Software-defined compute, storage, and virtualization, plus private cloud.
Representative providers: Nutanix, VMware vSAN (Broadcom), Microsoft Azure Stack HCI, Dell VxRail, HPE SimpliVity, Scale Computing.
The 2026 shift: Broadcom's ownership of VMware and the repricing of its portfolio drove the largest infrastructure re-platforming in a decade, with Nutanix the primary beneficiary of VMware migration.
22. Object and Scale-Out Storage
Massive-scale object and file storage for unstructured data and AI.
Representative providers: MinIO, Pure Storage, VAST Data, Qumulo, Cloudian, Dell ECS, NetApp StorageGRID, Ceph (open source).
The 2026 shift: AI training and inference made high-throughput storage a strategic purchase, and VAST Data's rise reframed the category around feeding GPUs rather than archiving cold data.
23. Cloud Cost Management (FinOps)
Visibility into and optimization of cloud spend.
Representative providers: Apptio Cloudability (IBM), VMware CloudHealth (Broadcom), Vantage, Harness Cloud Cost, Kubecost, Finout, ProsperOps, CAST AI.
The 2026 shift: FinOps expanded to cover AI and GPU spend, and the two incumbents landing inside IBM (Apptio) and Broadcom (CloudHealth) left room for independents (Vantage, Finout) and automation-first players (CAST AI, ProsperOps).
AI and Machine Learning
This is the fastest-moving domain on the map. MLOps platforms have largely stabilized around the cloud providers and a few independents, while the agent layer turns over quarter to quarter.
24. AI and ML Platforms (MLOps)
End-to-end platforms for building, deploying, and managing ML and AI models.
Representative providers: Databricks, Amazon SageMaker, Google Vertex AI, Microsoft Azure ML, Dataiku, DataRobot, Domino Data Lab, H2O.ai, Weights and Biases.
The 2026 shift: the cloud providers' platforms (SageMaker, Vertex, Azure ML) became the default for teams already on a cloud, pushing the independents toward governance, hybrid deployment, and generative-AI lifecycle features. RapidMiner was absorbed into Altair.
Compare: Top 10 MLOps and AI Platforms of 2026.
25. Agentic AI and AI Agents
Frameworks and enterprise platforms for building autonomous AI agents. This category moves fast, and the leaders shift quarter to quarter.
Representative providers (frameworks): LangChain and LangGraph, Microsoft Agent Framework (which merged AutoGen and Semantic Kernel), CrewAI, LlamaIndex, OpenAI Agents SDK, Google ADK.
Representative providers (enterprise agents): Aisera, Sierra, Cognigy, Salesforce Agentforce, ASAPP.
The 2026 shift: the build-versus-buy line hardened. Open-source frameworks matured toward production (durable execution, evaluation, observability), while enterprise agent platforms raced to own specific functions like support and service.
Compare: Top 8 Agentic AI Frameworks and Platforms of 2026. For the security of agents, see Agentic AI Security Tools and the AI Security Stack of 2026; for the connective layer, MCP Frameworks.
26. Computer Vision and Visual AI
Data platforms and tooling for building vision, image, and video models.
Representative providers: Roboflow, Voxel51, Scale AI, Labelbox, Encord, V7, Ultralytics.
The 2026 shift: Meta's multibillion-dollar investment in Scale AI reset the labeling market and pushed rivals to differentiate on data curation, evaluation, and open tooling (Voxel51's FiftyOne, Ultralytics' YOLO) rather than raw annotation.
Compare: Top 8 Computer Vision and Visual AI Platforms of 2026.
27. AI Coding Assistants
AI pair-programmers and code-intelligence tools. Another fast-moving category.
Representative providers: GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Claude Code, Tabnine, Amazon Q Developer, Sourcegraph Cody, Windsurf.
The 2026 shift: the frontier moved from autocomplete to agentic coding, where the assistant plans and edits across a repository. Editor-native agents (Cursor, Claude Code, Windsurf) set the pace, and the enterprise question became context, security, and code governance.
Compare: Top 5 AI Coding Assistants of 2026, and for security teams specifically, AI Coding Tools for Security Professionals.
Business and Marketing Software
The go-to-market stack is where AI agents are landing fastest into existing workflows, and where the incumbents (Salesforce, HubSpot, Adobe, Workday) are racing to add agentic features before challengers unbundle them.
28. Marketing Automation
Email, campaign, and lifecycle marketing automation.
Representative providers: HubSpot, Adobe Marketo, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Braze, ActiveCampaign, Act-On, Iterable.
The 2026 shift: the suites raced to embed AI agents for campaign creation and orchestration, while engagement specialists (Braze, Iterable) competed on real-time, cross-channel messaging that the all-in-one platforms handle less deftly.
29. Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A)
Budgeting, forecasting, and financial planning software.
Representative providers: Anaplan, Workday Adaptive Planning, Planful, Vena, Pigment, Cube, Prophix.
The 2026 shift: a modern cohort (Pigment, Cube) pressured the incumbents on usability and speed, and AI forecasting moved from a demo to a real evaluation criterion.
30. Product Experience and Feedback
Product analytics, digital adoption, feedback, and UX research.
Representative providers: Pendo, WalkMe, Productboard, UserTesting, Maze, Canny, Dovetail.
The 2026 shift: the category is splitting between in-product guidance and adoption (Pendo, WalkMe) and continuous discovery and research (Maze, Dovetail, UserTesting), with AI summarization of qualitative feedback becoming table stakes.
How to use this map
Three takeaways for anyone building a shortlist in 2026.
First, check who owns the vendor before you check the feature list. Four of the categories above changed hands at the top in a single year, and a name on an old comparison may now point to a different roadmap, price, and support model. This map keeps current owners in parentheses for exactly that reason.
Second, decide whether you are buying a point tool or a platform. In security especially, the honest question is often not "which CNAPP" or "which PAM" but "which platform am I consolidating onto, and does its module clear the bar for this job." The deep comparisons linked throughout answer that at the category level.
Third, if you are on the vendor side of this map, notice that buyers increasingly meet these categories first as an AI answer, not a analyst grid. Being represented accurately when an AI engine explains your category is becoming its own discipline. That is the subject of GEO Compass and of the first-party citation-share case study that shows what earns those citations.
This map will be kept current as the consolidation continues. The categories are stable; the owners are not.