As companies accept Tableau and Qlik, will the reporting platforms like BusinessObjects, Cognos, and MicroStrategy be left behind? Gartner sees conflicting needs and deployment practices. Business intelligence market remains in a significant state of shift, according to the Gartner’s 2015 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms.
Companies are overwhelmingly selecting a new type of data-discovery and interactive-analysis platforms from companies such as Tableau and Qlik. In fact, they’re picking these platforms even when they’re not the most suitable tools for the task at hand, states Gartner, and regardless of sticking around issues about the best ways to regulate data throughout the enterprise.
Business-centric platforms such as Tableau Software, Qlik, and other emerging vendors have a more narrow set of abilities, however are utilized more extensively for a range of BI and analytics functions– including reporting, for which they are not optimal …– mainly due to the fact that they are easy to use and deploy,” Gartner writes in its report. On the other hand, companies using more standard, IT-centric platforms (such as Cognos or BusinessObjects) that have a broad variety of BI abilities state they use them to narrow use-cases.
What’s at stake in this change is not just the survival of well-known, IT-centric BI platforms from the similarity IBM, Oracle, SAP, MicroStrategy, and Information Builders. Gartner states companies will unavoidably have to fix up why they have separate system-of-record reporting platforms and data-discovery platforms, due to the fact that “no single vendor completely deals with both [requirements]”.
What the data-discovery platforms like Tableau and Qlik tend to lack is the capability to scale and regulate data for a range of applications across the enterprise, according to Gartner. The traditional IT-centric platforms, at the same time, are trying to duplicate the business-user-friendly characteristics of the data-discovery platforms, however mostly these have been “light imitations” and hence “have had limited adoption.”
Against this backdrop, and based upon more than 2,000 customer interviews over the in 2014, Gartner says its most current Quadrant is based on wider expectations on its horizontal “efficiency of vision” axis and greater expectations on the vertical “capability to perform” axis. For this reason, the analyst firm cautions that comparing vendor positions from in 2014 to this year is “not specifically beneficial.” In essence, a lot of suppliers moved down and to the left relative to these increasing expectations.
However, a few standouts moved up and to the right, and some vendors moved down and left more than others. By all means follow Gartner’s guidance to put the vendor “staminas” and “warns” outlined in the report into the context of your business and IT requires. However here’s a quick rundown on the noteworthy movement within the Leaders, Visionaries, Challengers, and Niche-Players quadrants:.
Leaders
SAS is now the leader on the BI vision axis. Gartner cites customer praise for SAS’s market understanding, its product performance and quality, and the capability of its BI and analytics platform to attend to diverse use-cases. Cares include license costs and reported trouble migrating to the most recent platforms. SAS also is a leader on Gartner’s just-released Advanced Analytics Magic Quadrant.
SAP runs a close second on the vision axis. Gartner cited staminas, including SAP Lumira self-service data-prep and infographics functions, and new predictive analytics capabilities gained through SAP’s acquisition of KXEN. Cares include low customer-satisfaction scores and below-average marks for data-discovery and dashboarding capabilities.
Tableau Software remains the leading vendor on the execution axis for its tendency to “land and expand” once consumers start using its software. Tableau slipped somewhat on the vision axis. Cautions include Tableau’s “restricted product line” and the hazard that matches may match the vendor’s data-visualization capabilities.
Visionaries
Tibco is the only vendor to fall out of last year’s Leaders quadrant. Tibco had a rough year in 2014, stumbling economically and getting new (private) ownership. Tibco also acquired Jaspersoft in 2014, and Gartner notes its 2015 ranking is based on both the Spotfire (data discovery) and Jaspersoft (embedded BI) products. Gartner cites strengths, including a wide range of prospective use-cases for both product. Cares consist of minimal integration in between Spotfire and Jaspersoft up until now and weak metadata management for traditional styles of BI analysis.
Challengers
Logi Analytics transferred to the right on the vision axis, having introduced in 2014 a collaborative data-discovery platform, Logi Vision, and a clear roadmap to integrate it with its IT-oriented Logi Info product. Clients cite strengths, including low license cost and low application cost and effort. The items are good for basic, centrally managed reporting, dashboards, and standard ad hoc analysis needs, however complex analysis and decentralized data-discovery are not this vendor’s strong suit, Gartner cautions.
Niche Players
Pyramid Analytics is an “emerging and well-funded” company that’s now near the top of this quadrant on the execution axis. Building on Microsoft’s BI stack, Pyramid’s strengths include ease of use for developers and users, according to Gartner. Cares include below-average data-mashup and mobile BI abilities, as ranked by customers.
Once again, the vendors noted above are those that appeared to buck the typical down and leftward move from in 2014’s quadrant to this year’s report. Arcplan, Bitam, and Infor were dropped from the report because they failed to fulfill this year’s addition requirements. Datawatch was included since it did meet those requirements, according to the analyst company.
Gartner’s analysis is based on 13 abilities and 4 BI and analytics use-cases: centralized BI provisioning, decentralized analytics, regulated data discovery, and OEM/embedded BI. Read the 46-page report (readily available as a complimentary download) for the deep details. Regardless of whether you believe Gartner is 100 % vendor-neutral and independent in its assessments or not, this latest report presents a mountain of important detail and context on suppliers and items that is indispensable to prospective software buyers.
Source: InformationWeek
