¡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.
In this article you will find...
- Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms 2021
- Microsoft, Leader of Gartner's Magic Quadrant 2021
- Power BI: Leading Analytics and BI Platform According to Gartner
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.
Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms 2021
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, Leader of Gartner's Magic Quadrant 2021
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.
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.