More

    Round-up: Gartner’s Magic Quadrant Leaders Don’t Always Lead in Customer Base

    Gartner’s “2012 Magic Quadrant for Data Integration Tools” report is now available for free perusal, if you’re looking for a little light reading this weekend.

    Once again, IBM and Informatica are vying for the top spot in the leader quadrant. It’s a bit like watching a horse race each year, to see how much one will out-edge the other either on the “ability to execute” vertical or the “completeness of vision” horizontal. This year, Informatica seems to top out in both — albeit more so on ability to execute than on completeness of vision.

    SAP, Oracle and SAS-DataFlux crunched up together nearer to the center of the matrix, but definitely in the leader’s quadrant.

    Microsoft is in the challenger’s quadrant, while Information Builders-iWay Software, Talend and Pervasive ranked as visionaries.

    I don’t know if this is the first year Gartner’s included this information or the first year I’ve noticed it, but one thing I noticed is this report includes an estimate of the vendor’s customer base. And if you just look at customer base, you’ll find a very different picture of who’s leading in data integration tools.

    For instance, SAS-Dataflux boasts a customer base as more than 13,000, while SAP’s estimated base is more than 10,000. Microsoft has an estimated customer base of 12,000. While Gartner doesn’t specify, with numbers like that you have to assume that’s for the integration products specifically mentioned in the report.

    And our top two leaders? Informatica’s customer base is estimated at approximately 5,000 while IBM is approximately 9,400.

    Oracle’s estimated customer base: 3,500.

    So, it seems success on Gartner’s magic quadrant doesn’t make you the leader in the market, which really shouldn’t be surprising, when you consider SAP’s edge through its ERP customer base and SAS’s edge in business analytics.

    You can read the full report online. In addition to explaining why each vendor ranked as it did, there’s a long list of data integration solutions that didn’t make the list due to Gartner’s very specific capability requirements. It’s worth reviewing, because it gives a brief explanation of what each vendor does — and, after all, Gartner’s requirements may not match your requirements.

    In other news: Jitterbit 5 is in beta release. Jitterbit is one of those integration companies that didn’t make the Magic Quadrant, but is mentioned in Gartner’s report as a “freely downloadable software with a focus on application integration (event- and message-based) and data integration.” This beta is the first release to include an installer for Linux, as well as a revamped process engine and process monitor. The Jitterbit team also enhanced performance so it can better support large-volume cloud APIs, which can become a major bottleneck for cloud to on-premise integration.

    Curious about Microsoft and Big Data? Microsoft’s Curt Peterson, who is a principal group program manager in the server and tools organization, will discuss Big Data in the high tech industry during an upcoming webinar. He’ll be joined by Mariela Koenig, an Aberdeen Group research director in manufacturing and product innovation and engineering. They’ll discuss use cases for high tech as well as how to get started and use the data. I would think of all markets, high tech would be the one to least need this discussion, but it should be interesting to hear what Microsoft is doing with this technology. The Microsoft-sponsored webinar is scheduled for Dec. 13, at 9 a.m. PST (12 p.m. EST) and you do need to pre-register.

    What happens when EMC Greenplum and SAS team up? Apparently, support for Big Data in analytics, according to the promotion for an upcoming webcast. EMC will explain how it “designed a platform for data capture with analytics and reporting on customer feedback, used operational and financial data …” Basically, they’ve combined SAS’ High-Performance Analytics with EMC Greenplum’s Unified Analytic Platform. There’s more, but I’ll let you read about it. The event will be Dec. 6 at 10 a.m. PT.

    Loraine Lawson
    Loraine Lawson
    Loraine Lawson is a freelance writer specializing in technology and business issues, including integration, health care IT, cloud and Big Data.

    Get the Free Newsletter!

    Subscribe to Daily Tech Insider for top news, trends, and analysis.

    Latest Articles