A mere eight days after its acquisition by Progress Software closed, Domo on Wednesday launched a platform update highlighted by an updated version of Magic ETL, the vendor's no-code tool for data preparation.
The new features in Magic ETL are designed to enable data teams to more efficiently build, monitor and fix data pipelines. In addition, Domo's platform update includes new capabilities in AI Chat, the vendor's natural language interface for querying data, that allow users to analyze multiple datasets and documents simultaneously.
"Trusted AI starts in the pipeline," Devin Pratt, an analyst at IDC, told TechTarget. "This release helps teams see what is happening and fix it before it reaches the dashboard."
Capabilities such as AI-powered data analysis and AI-assisted data preparation are now common among data and analytics vendors, he continued. But where Domo is separating itself from competing vendors is by combining AI-powered analysis with concrete governance and embedding AI directly into ETL workspaces.
"Conversational analytics is table stakes now," Pratt said. "Domo's edge is wrapping it in governance and pushing AI into the ETL canvas itself."
Staying the course
There are no immediate plans to alter Domo's product development roadmap or change the cadence of its updates following Progress' $400 million acquisition of Domo's technology, according to Jason Longhurst, Progress' senior director of product marketing.
"Providing consistency in delivery and honoring recent commitments is important to Progress," he told TechTarget.
Trusted AI starts in the pipeline. This release helps teams see what is happening and fix it before it reaches the dashboard.
Devin PrattAnalyst, IDC
Meanwhile, a combination of customer feedback and the need to keep pace with broader market trends drove Domo to develop the new features included in its latest platform update, Longhurst continued.
"Customer feedback was the main motivation for the updates we are making to Magic ETL," he said.
Conversely, Longhurst noted that Model Context Protocol (MCP) toolkits that enable authorized AI assistants to perform operational work across Domo's environment -- a feature not yet generally available -- are being developed in response to where the vendor sees the market headed.
Domo first launched Magic ETL in 2017 before introducing a no-code version of the data preparation tool in 2021. Now, Magic ETL includes an expanded ability to see and address data pipeline problems, heatmaps that surface jobs with significant runtime effects and versioning to provide read-only access to pipeline configurations so developers can compare current versions of pipelines with earlier ones.
In addition, the Magic ETL update features redesigned canvas to improve navigating large workflows, an AI-powered Sentiment Analysis Tile to evaluate text from customer surveys and support tickets, and an AI-powered Classification Tile that automates categorizing unstructured text.
"The latest Domo updates deliver several improvements that are individually incremental but add up to significant improvements to the overall user experience for developing and managing data pipelines," Matt Aslett, an analyst at ISG, told TechTarget, adding that the Magic ETL and AI Chat updates represent the vendor delivering some of the capabilities it unveiled during its user conference in March.
Beyond new Magic ETL and AI Chat capabilities, among a spate of other new capabilities, Domo's platform update features the MCP toolkits, an MCP trigger in Data Workflows that tracks when an agent or AI assistant begins a process and support for Snowflake Semantic Views so customers can use business logic stored in Snowflake semantic models without having to copy data.
"The announcements reinforce that … Domo should be thought of as providing much more than a business intelligence platform, with additional capabilities addressing data preparation and integration, as well as business workflow execution," Aslett said.
Regarding whether the platform update includes any hints about Progress' long-term plan for Domo, Pratt noted that the substantive nature of the release hints that Progress is committed to keeping Domo competitive.
"A first release with this much substance is the clearest sign yet that Progress is committed to Domo," Pratt said.
Next for Domo to do
As Domo becomes part of Progress' broader platform, Longhurst identified three areas where Progress could focus: Enabling customers to build data and AI tools on top of trusted data, improving the speed at which customers can act on insights and ensuring that AI is appropriately governed.
"Customers are seeking help with making AI more practical and accountable," he said. "You'll continue to see us focus on simplifying data preparation, enabling more intuitive analytics experiences and providing the governance capabilities required to deploy AI at enterprise scale to support their needs."
Longhurst also said it's a priority to move MCP toolkits and support for Snowflake's semantic models into public release.
And that is critical, according to Pratt. He noted that while the new Magic ETL and AI Chat capabilities now generally available are significant, the features that might ultimately be the most valuable are the ones that are still in the testing stages.
"The best of this release is still in preview," Pratt said. "Getting it into customers' hands is the obvious next move."
Eric Avidon is a senior news writer for Informa TechTarget and a journalist with more than three decades of experience. He covers analytics and data management.
