¡The analysis and research consulting firm Gartner has published a new Gartner's Magic Quadrant which ranks the most relevant analytics and business intelligence (ABI) platforms providers. Microsoft is the leader of the quadrant yet again and Gartner rates it as the best ABI platform distributor.
If you are immersed in the world of data, technology and business, you are probably familiar with Gartner's Magic Quadrant, a graphical composition that rates the most significant techonolgy, data and business companies in multiple areas. It is the result of extensive market-specific research and concludes in a quadrangle chart that classifies companies into 4 categories: Leaders, Visionaries, Niche Players and Challengers. Gartner's criteria when evaluating companies are vision and ability to execute.
Gartner Magic Quadrant is an extremely influential source of information that has the respect and trust of the technology sector and has a remarkable power of conviction over the decision-making process of companies that contract IT services. The quadrant explores a highly competitive market —the technology market— in which differentiation is key.
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Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms
A new quadrant on analytics and business intelligence platforms has been released this February. According to Gartner, analytics and BI platforms "are characterized by easy-to-use functionality that supports a full analytic workflow —from data preparation to visual exploration and insight generation— with an emphasis on self-service usage and augmented user assistance."
The research findings are closely tied to a market where the vast majority of new spending is on cloud deployments and data visualization capabilities have become a basic service offered by most BI and analytics platforms. Now differentiation is based on how well platforms support augmented analytics —machine learning and artificial intelligence— which has become the key for business people to understand data and make data-driven decisions.
Based on this, Gartner has focused the ranking on the following functionalities: data security, manageability, cloud analytics, data source connectivity, data preparation, data catalog, automated insights, data visualization, data storytelling, natural language query (NLQ), natural language generation (NLG) and reporting.
The results of 2021 Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms are:
Source: Gartner (2021)
Microsoft Power BI Leader of Gartner's Magic Quadrant
Gartner elects Microsoft as the leader of the quadrant once again —as they did in 2020—. Gartner highlights the company's massive market reach and comprehensive and visionary product roadmap and recognizes Power BI as the best analytics and business intelligence platform on the market.
Power BI: Leading Analytics and BI Platform According to Gartner
Power BI is a complete data analytics and business intelligence solution that, in the words of Gartner: "Offers data preparation, visual-based data discovery, interactive dashboards and augmented analytics. It is available as a SaaS option running in the Azure cloud or as an on-premises option in Power BI Report Server." Furthermore, Gartner positively notes the weekly updates to cloud-based Power BI service: "More augmented analytics in the form of AI-infused experiences, including smart narratives (NLG) and anomaly detection capabilities for out-of-the-box visuals."
Power BI's strenghts are, according to Gartner:
- Alignment with Teams: Gartner highlights the growing integration of Power BI into Teams that will further increase Power BI's reach into the world of remote working.
- Unbeatable price/power combination: Power BI is one of the reasons for the drastic price reduction of ABI platforms recently. It is difficult to compete with the technical capabilities and possibilities offered by both its free version and its paid version, which, compared to other platforms, are very economical.
- Scope of product ambition: Gartner acclaims Microsoft's continued investment in visionary capabilities integrated with Power BI such as artificial intelligence or machine learning-driven automatic optimization that autotunes query performance.
What is Power BI?
Power BI is a powerful business analytics service provided by Microsoft. It enables users to visualize and analyze data, create interactive reports and dashboards and share insights across the organization. Power BI allows businesses to connect to a wide range of data sources, transform raw data into meaningful information, and create interactive visualizations and dashboards, making it a popular tool for data analysis and business intelligence.
Power BI key features are:
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Data Connectivity: Power BI supports connecting to a wide variety of data sources, including Excel files, databases (SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, etc.), cloud services (Azure, SharePoint, Dynamics 365), web services, and many more. This allows users to access and consolidate data from multiple sources in one place.
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Data Transformation and Query Editor: With Power BI's built-in Query Editor, users can clean, transform, and shape data before loading it into the data model. It provides a user-friendly interface for data preparation tasks, such as merging data, removing duplicates, and applying calculations.
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Data Modeling: Power BI's data modeling capabilities allow users to create relationships between tables, define measures using the DAX (Data Analysis Expressions) language, and enhance the data model to enable sophisticated analysis.
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Visualization and Reporting: Power BI offers a wide range of data visualization options, including charts, graphs, maps, tables, and more. Users can create interactive reports and dashboards to present insights in a visually compelling manner.
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Natural Language Queries: Power BI supports natural language queries, allowing users to ask questions about their data using everyday language. The Q&A feature interprets user queries and generates visualizations accordingly.
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Collaboration and Sharing: Power BI allows users to publish and share reports and dashboards securely with colleagues or stakeholders within the organization or externally. Sharing can be done through Power BI service, email, or embedding in other applications.
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Mobile Access: Power BI provides mobile apps for iOS and Android devices, allowing users to access and interact with their reports and dashboards on the go.
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Power BI Desktop: Power BI Desktop is a free application for Windows that allows users to create and author reports and dashboards offline. It provides advanced data modeling and visualization capabilities before publishing to the Power BI service.
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Power BI Service: The Power BI service is a cloud-based platform where users can publish, share, collaborate, and access Power BI reports and dashboards. It also provides additional features like data refresh, collaboration, and content management.
Power BI is available in several editions, including Power BI Free, Power BI Pro (for individual use), and Power BI Premium (for enterprise-scale deployments). Its ease of use, powerful analytics capabilities, and integration with other Microsoft products make it a popular choice for organizations seeking to leverage their data for data-driven decision-making.
For Bismart, a Microsoft Power BI partner, it is an honor that Garnter considers Power BI to be the leading platform in the market. This ensures that Bismart develops its solutions with the best technologies and offers its customers the best and most innovative technical capabilities.
- In Gartner's words: "Power BI is now often the option that organizations have in mind when using Gartner’s client inquiry service to ask about ABI platform selection <<why not Power BI?>> is effectively the question most are asking.
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