Gartner 2021 Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms
They do it again!
Gartner published the 2021 Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms this month and yet again it appears that subjective criteria vs technology evaluation leads the rationale for placement. This year the Leader Quadrant went from 4 vendors to 3 with ThoughSpot moving to Visionary and 2 of the 3 of the remaining leaders moving down. Garter also reinforces its position from 2020 that data visualization is commoditized, and that true differentiation is based on integrated support for augmented analytics including data exploration, insight explanation, machine learning and AI-assisted data preparation all of which Cognos Analytics supports today natively. We disagree with Gartner’s market evaluation and ranking of vendors since it does not represent the evaluation of software against these differentiators and still seems to over-emphasize self-service data visualization while ignoring enterprise reporting.
For IBM, our steady improvement from 2018 continues as we moved on vision, almost breaking into the visionary’s quadrant, while also improving our relative placement on ability to execute. That said, Gartner’s ranking of IBM completely undervalues our comprehensive features and capabilities. We believe that the large gap currently portrayed in the MQ is misaligned with feedback from the Gartner Peer Insights (GPI) data as well as Gartner's own written analysis. While Gartner still categorizes IBM as a Niche Player, the latest GPI data shows that compared with vendors in the Leaders' quadrant, IBM Cognos Analytics is significantly ahead in almost every product capability as well as willingness to recommend (95%), while having an equal overall peer rating of 4.6/5.
Gartner's write up on Cognos is positive, highlighting three key areas: Comprehensive Mode 1 and Mode 2 functionality, applying Analytics & AI everywhere and flexible deployment options. These are significant strengths essential for enterprise Business Intelligence and they line up perfectly with Gartner’s top drivers of product satisfaction.
IBM Cautions
The cautions identified are easy to refute and rarely come up. Let’s take a look.
Looking at the cautions in this year’s MQ, I can’t help but think about what weight they actually play in an evaluation process. None of them are rooted in the actual solution we provide our clients. They are subjective and more marketing centric than customer value oriented
Cognos has fading brand value: The authors measure momentum and brand value based on Gartner client inquiries and searches. Contrary to Gartner’s perception, we continue to build our user base, as demonstrated by a 187% increase in community engagement and have on-boarded hundreds of net new clients this past year.
Lack of “sales adoption” drivers from other IBM platform technologies: This is not unique to IBM and is also not a relevant consideration to a customer evaluating BI vendors. Cognos Analytics is embedded in 60+ unique IBM software products and we have tight integration with numerous IBM solutions like, Watson Studio, Watson Knowledge Catalog, Watson Discovery and our new platform IBM CloudPak for Data
Pricing of Cognos Analytics On-Demand is not competitive with other cloud vendors: We offer enterprise capabilities out-of-the-box vs vendors who charge for add-ons & extensions. Cognos Analytics Standard Edition which starts at $15/m includes authoring vs just read-only.
Gartner Cautions on the “leaders”
The cautions are much more serious and cast doubt on each of vendor’s ability to deliver and total cost of ownership.
PowerBI: Significant functional gaps on-prem | No platform flexibility | Connectivity to on-prem data
Tableau: Premium pricing | Hidden costs of add-ons and extensions | Fragmented experience for augmented analytic functions
Qlik: Pricing complexity | Hidden costs of add-ons| Lack of upgrade success and migration issues| Product cohesiveness
The difference in how cautions are determined among vendors highlights that the MQ can be a dangerous tool for a client looking to select an enterprise analytics platform.
I would also like to share a recent blog by Ryan Dolley of PM Square, a long time Cognos Analytics partner who offers his view of this year’s Magic Quadrant as well
Call to action
If you have the full report, always go beyond the picture, invest the time and read it fully! If you share our point of view, help us by sharing your positive feedback with Gartner directly (at no cost) by completing a Gartner Peer Review at: https://www.gartner.com/reviews/survey/home
Douglas Bonanno
Global Sales Executive, Cognos Analytics
#CognosAnalyticswithWatson