What is the point of the "business intelligence magic quadrant"?

Hi Paul,

You've already gotten some good responses on how to interpret the Gartner BI Magic Quadrant, so I thought I'd address the 2nd part of your question, which was more around the options for SMBs. There are a lot more BI vendors for the midmarket than there used to be, so it's a good time to be looking. I'm assuming that you don't have a large IT team and that your budget is limited.

If that's the case, there are two types of BI that you should investigate first: SaaS BI and in-memory.

SaaS BI
Vendors include: Birst, PivotLink, GoodData, Business Objects OnDemand
SaaS BI is delivered as a service over the web, so upfront costs are lower, implementation times are faster, and ongoing maintenance requirements are few. Some vendors offer more robust BI platforms than others, and some are highly specialized to one type of analysis, such as sales analysis, so you need to know what your needs are.

In-memory analytics:
Vendors include: QlikTech
In-memory is good for groups and it runs off of your own computer. This is best for visualization of data that's already fairly organized. At smaller scale it's very affordable. At larger scale it starts rivaling the traditional on-premise providers in terms of cost and complexity. Doing this well also requires some knowledge of coding (although not a lot, and certainly not as much as on-premise BI).

If my assumption is wrong and you *do* have a lot of BI expertise on staff, there are more options:

Open Source BI
Vendor: Pentaho
Software is free but support is not, and you implement and maintain it yourself.

On-premise BI
Vendor: Microsoft SSAS
Many small businesses start here, especially if you're a Microsoft shop and have an IT team to implement and maintain it. Features are limited and it's somewhat complex.

In the interest of full and fair disclosure, I work for Birst, a SaaS BI company (www.birst.com), so I'm a little inclined to the SaaS option.

If you're interested in learning more about SaaS BI from an analyst firm, Aberdeen just came out with a report. If you use this link, you can get a free copy of it: http://www.aberdeen.com/link/sponsor.asp?spid=30411437&cid=6512

There aren't a lot of in-depth, midmarket BI vendor comparisons out there from industry analysts, so you'll have to do your own research. However, Cindi Howson and Lyndsay Wise are two analysts who might be able to help you out. Both have blogs on the BeyeNetwork: http://www.b-eye-network.com/

- Barbara
Birst
www.birst.com

If you would like to understand more on the Gartner Magic Quadrant, then please contact me directly, I'd be happy to explain this further. Attached below is a link to where anyone can find details on Gartner methodology
http://www.gartner.com/technology/research/methodologies/research_mq.jsp

Positioning Technology Players Within a Specific Market
Who are the competing players in the major technology markets? How are they positioned to help you over the long haul? Gartner Magic Quadrants are a culmination of research in a specific market, giving you a wide-angle view of the relative positions of the market’s competitors. By applying a graphical treat­ment and a uniform set of evaluation criteria, Gartner Magic Quadrants quickly help you digest how well technology providers are executing against their stated vision.

How Do You Use Magic Quadrants?
Clients use Magic Quadrants as a first step to understanding the technology providers they might consider for a specific investment opportunity.
Keep in mind that focusing on the leaders’ quadrant isn’t always the best course of action. There are good reasons to consider market challengers. And a niche player may support your needs better than a market leader. It all depends on how the provider aligns with your business goals.

How Do Magic Quadrants Work?
Magic Quadrants provide a graphical competitive positioning of four types of technology providers, where market growth is high and provider differentiation is distinct:
Leaders execute well against their current vision and are well positioned for tomorrow.
Visionaries understand where the market is going or have a vision for changing market rules, but do not yet execute well.
Niche Players focus successfully on a small segment, or are unfocused and do not out-innovate or outperform others.
Challengers execute well today or may dominate a large segment, but do not demonstrate an understanding of market direction.

Pasted from

There is a structured methodology that is used in all cases. The one thing you need to take into consideration is the inclusion and exclusion criteria. There are always going to be vendors that are not included on a Magic Quadrant due to they do not meet the inclusion criteria. This does not mean they should not be considered, and is the reason Gartner also does a report called cool vendors which looks at vendors not on a magic quadrant but organisation should put them on their radar.

Some further detail around our methodology is:

2.0
Qualitative Market Analysis
To evaluate vendors for Magic Quadrants and MarketScopes, Gartner uses a comprehensive process that defines the boundaries of the market, research focus and the steps taken to form the analysis.
2.1
Identify the Market
To be considered for a Magic Quadrant or MarketScope, a market must be distinct and viable. It is selected for analysis based on the impact of emerging trends and users' need to understand changing market dynamics. We focus on markets in which our insights can assist clients with planning, investment decision making and the ongoing support of vendor relationships.
2.2
Select the Vendors
A Magic Quadrant or MarketScope is not intended to be an exhaustive analysis of every vendor in a market, but rather a focused analysis. Inclusion criteria consist of market share, revenue, number of clients, types of products or services, target market or other defining characteristics that help narrow the scope of the research to those vendors that we consider to be the most important or best suited to our clients' needs.
2.3
Define the Rating Criteria
Magic Quadrants use standard criteria in two categories: completeness of vision and ability to execute. MarketScopes may use up to seven of these criteria to focus on factors that differentiate a particular market. We then adapt the inclusion criteria to a market by prioritizing and weighting them based on a high, low or standard scale of importance. In some cases, a criterion may have a "no rating" weight because it has low relevance for the market.

2.3.1
Completeness of Vision
• Market Understanding: The ability of a vendor to understand buyers' needs and translate these needs into products and services. A vendor that shows the highest degree of vision listens and understands buyers' wants and needs, which it can shape or enhance with its vision.
• Marketing Strategy: A clear, differentiated set of messages consistently communicated throughout the organization and publicized through the Web site, advertising, customer programs and positioning statements.
• Sales Strategy: A strategy for selling products that uses the appropriate network of direct and indirect sales, marketing, service and communication affiliates to extend the scope and depth of a vendor's market reach, skills, expertise, technologies, services and customer base.
• Offering (Product) Strategy: A vendor's approach to product development and delivery that emphasizes differentiation, functions, methodology and feature set in relation to current and future requirements.
• Business Model: The validity and logic of a vendor's underlying business proposition.
• Vertical/Industry Strategy: A vendor's strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings to meet the needs of market segments, including vertical industries.
• Innovation: Marshaling of resources, expertise or capital for competitive advantage, investment, consolidation or defense against acquisition.
• Geographic Strategy: A vendor's strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings to meet the needs of regions outside of the vendor's "home" or native area, directly or through partners, channels and subsidiaries, as appropriate for that region and market.

2.3.2
Ability to Execute
• Product/Service: Core goods and services offered by the vendor that compete in and serve the market. This category includes product and service capabilities, quality, feature sets and skills, offered natively or through original equipment manufacturers, as defined in the market definition and detailed in subcriteria.
• Overall Viability: Includes an assessment of the vendor's overall financial health, the financial and practical success of the relevant business unit, and the likelihood of that business unit to continue to invest in and offer the product within the vendor's product portfolio.
• Sales Execution/Pricing: The vendor's capabilities in pre-sales activities and the structure that supports them. This criterion includes deal management, pricing and negotiation, pre-sales support and the overall effectiveness of the sales channel.
• Market Responsiveness and Track Record: Ability to respond, change direction, be flexible and achieve competitive success as opportunities develop, competitors act, customer needs evolve and market dynamics change. This criterion also considers the vendor's history of responsiveness.
• Marketing Execution: The clarity, quality, creativity and efficacy of programs designed to deliver the vendor's message to influence the market, promote its brand and business, increase awareness of its products and establish a positive identification with the product, brand or vendor with buyers. This "mind share" can be driven by a combination of publicity, promotions, thought leadership, word of mouth and sales activities.
• Customer Experience: Relationships, products, and services and programs that enable clients to succeed with the products evaluated. This criterion includes the ways customers receive technical support or account support. It can also include ancillary tools, customer support programs (and their quality), availability of user groups and service-level agreements.
• Operations: The vendor's ability to meet its goals and commitments. Factors include the quality of the organizational structure, such as skills, experiences, programs, systems and other vehicles, that enable the vendor to operate effectively and efficiently.

Ian Bertram
Managing Vice President
Gartner Global BI Team

I have my doubts about the "Magic Quadrant" and its ability to effectively compare tools. SAP, IBM, Microsoft, and MicroStrategy have very similar architectures and take significant time and investment to install and implement at the enterprise level. Freeware tools such as Pentaho and Tableau are much less expensive but they are buggy and difficult to find skilled developers to work in them. If you are in the process of evaluating tools the "Magic Quadrant" should be the starting point.

To me the "Visionaries" are the companies that challenge the architecture of the "Leaders", they are less data source centric and more focused on delivering objects faster. They somewhat move away from the "Everything must go into the warehouse first" mindset. If you look at some of the "Challengers" history such as QlichTech they started out in the "Visionaries" quadrant and have moved up after adding features that make them more scalable and compliant with SOX.

At the end of the day you must select a product based on the requirements of the business. If you are new to BI tools then the best thing to do is to setup a POC with a couple of the vendors, choosing from several of the quadrants. Make sure to include criteria such as multiple data sources, security, accessibility, scalability, time to delivery, custom development, and cost. The one that out performs the others will be the winner!

HI,

I have worked on different BI tools but my personal feeling is that MS BI on sqlserver 2005/2008 gives the best ROI since they have the reporting , integration , OLAP ,notification and data mining all provided as a add one to a good RDBMS not to speak off xmll datatype support in the db , native stored procedures . all this adds to huge performance and scalability benefits . MDX because of its origins in MS gives three dimensional , business relevant data . Others BI tools cost more and to add all the parts on would cost a fortune unless the customers has some of the tools already in place . Most people for unknown reasons dont like MS but i will give MS hands up for its BI offering which suits the small medium sector very well. If people are game i can even develop a POC to show them the ROI benefits .

You could read Forrester's report, newly released this week, which evaluates Open Source BI vendors on 157 criteria (http://bit.ly/cDi4BB). The findings show that Actuate BIRT leads in Open Source BI.

Usually Gartner's Magic Quadrant doesn't take in account OS BI solutions. Open Source BI could be the right choice especially for small-medium size companies.
It depends on your needs, obviously. Among OS BI solutions, I recommend SpagoBI www.spagobi.org , the complete and only entirely open source business intelligence suite. I mean that it's complete and you can use it freely (and you have to pay nothing!). But if you like to have support, Engineering's Group, SpagoBI developer, and its partner network, can give it. If your focus is just on few specific analytical engines (as sometimes happens), you can avoid to buy an expensive solution. And with SpagoBI you have freely all the analytical engines you like, in addition.
By the way, Forrester's last OS BI report, comparing the complete OSBI suites, shows that SpagoBI community edition (the OSS edition) is comparable with JasperSoft and Pentaho Enterprise editions.

I'd like to fix an incorrect statement by Nathan Johnson, where he says that Tableau is a freeware tool, and that it's "buggy".
This is not the case, since Tableau is a commercial product, and to my knowledge it's high quality and not buggy at all.

Hi Paul,

We are open source champions and provide cost effective solutions for all our customers based on their needs. You may want to give me a shout, so that we can discuss.

Thanks & Regards,
Sandipan