The era of Big Data is upon us. So are the eras of master data management (MDM), business intelligence (BI), and cloud computing. Each of them confront organizations with the challenge of getting a handle on their data before it overwhelms them.

All of which, says research firm Gartner, is driving rapid growth in the market for data integration tools. The data integration tool market grew by 20 percent in 2010, according to Gartner. The research specialist expects that final 2011 results will show further growth of about 15 percent.

According to Gartner vice president and report co-author Ted Friedman, "the growth is coming from a lot of different directions." He adds that "more and more companies want to manage information in a strategic way so they're looking for more modern and robust ways to move data around the enterprise.