Earlier this week Gartner released the latest report on the modern Analytics & BI Platforms market and the Gartner Magic Quadrant for 2020, to show the relative position of the competing players in the market and how well they are executing on their stated visions and how well they are performing agains Gartners market view.
How does the Magic Quadrant work? It's a graphical representation of competitors of four types of technology providers:
Leaders: They execute well on their current vision and are well positioned for tomorrow
Visionairies: Understands where the market is going or have a vision for changing the market rules, but do not extecute well
Niche players: Focus successfully on a small segment or are unfocused and do not outperform others
Challengers: Execute well today or may dominate a large segment, but do not demonstrate an understanding of market direction
You should always read the quadrant in a way that the provider aligns with your business goals and needs
The above is taken from Gartner, and you can read more about the Magic Quadrant research methodology here.
Magic Quadrant 2019 vs. 2020
Leaders
- We can see that Microsoft has moved a small step to the left (further from to completeness of vision) and up (ability to excecute)
- Tableau has moved a small step up (ability to execute) and to the right - closer to Microsoft
- Qlik is almost positioned the same in 2019 and 2020
- ThoughtSpot has moved slightly down (ability to execute)
Visionaries
Things seems to be happening in this part of the quadrant
- Oracle has moved from being a Niche player in 2019 to Visionary (completeness of vision) and up (ability to execute) in 2020
- Yellowfin has moved from being a Niche Player in 2019 to the Visionary (completeness of vision) in 2020
- Tibco Software has moved from Visionary in 2019 to Challenger in 2020 and has a higher ability to execute
Niche Players
- GoodData is no longer with us in 2020
- We have two new players Dundas and Alibaba Cloud
- Looker has moved from Niche in 2019 to Challenger in 2020
- Pyramid Analytics has moved up on ability to execute
- IBM slightly up on ability to execute, but slightly towards left on completeness of vision
- Information Builders has moved up on ability to execute in 2020, but slightly left on completeness of vision
Challengers
From only having MicroStrategy as Challenger in 2019, Looker and TIBCO Software has joined as challengers in 2020. MicroStrategy has moved up on completeness of vision and towards the right, ability to execute.
Personal thoughts on the changes in the market
I believe that Microsoft has and will continue to have a very strong position in BI & Analytics Platforms in many, many years to come. Especially given the tight integration to Office, the wider use cases supported by the Power Platform, Azure Data Platform integrations, added and roadmap Enterprise features, User friendly experiences and a fantastic growing community, opening up the platform more, alongside the ability to deliver fast pace innovations based on market needs. Some of the things mentioned as caution are the custom connectors performance, and this is something Microsoft is working on together with other vendors like SAP. However it's interesting to see challengers like Looker (Google aquisition - pending), focusing on slack integrations, and automated data model generation capabilities on top of the native Google Portifolio. However it requires coding and all in all lacks some of the key functionality requested by the market. It will be very exciting to see what happens once the aquisition is closed and to see what they are planning for the future roadmaps. Salesforce aquisition of Tableau is another interesting aspect to consider. The Magic Quadrant has not taken this into consideration in the 2020 quadrant, however in 2021 this might be the case. Salesforce as a visionary, Tableau as a leader, AND Looker as a challenger might change the picture quite a lot in the future, with all the power that brings to the table. Also new players are entering, like Dundas specialising in embedded capabilities and Alibaba Cloud with Quick BI focusing on the China market in particular. Although with limited scope and reach for now, we should kill keep an eye open to follow these.
Salesforce as a visionary, Tableau as a leader AND Looker as a challenger might change the picture quite a lot in the future
Some of the things that I have identified from the report as core themes that will be key as we move forward with more advanced data use cases at scale, is the ability to connect to, question and perform on large amounts of data and to be able to handle large model complexity in a governed infrastructure. Alongside the ability to ask questions, get hidden insights, predict, tell stories, communicate and embed analytics into the applications we use everyday- To become even more actionable and data driven.
The full report can be downloaded here.
I'm excited for the future, are you?
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