There's a new leader in the Master Data Management space, according to the recently updated Gartner Magic Quadrant for MDM for Customer Data.” Initiate Systems joined perennials Oracle Siebel UCM and IBM in the leader quadrant of this year's Magic Quadrant, DestinationCRM.com reports this week.

Initiate also earned the distinction of beating out all other vendors in Gartner's “completeness of vision” assessment. Meanwhile, Gartner included a new entrant into the “Niche player” quadrant – the UK-based firm, VisionWare.

SAP, Oracle CDH, DataFlux, Tibco Software and Sun Microsystems also ranked as niche players, while Siperian and D&B Purisma placed in the visionaries quadrant. Gartner did not include any vendors in the “challengers” quadrant.

If you're wondering about that Customer Data designation, let me explain. MDM solutions are typically divided according to one of two technology “heritages:” Customer Data Integration solutions or Product Information Management (PIM) solutions. A separate Magic Quadrant deals with Master Data Management of Product Data solutions – although, as Gartner Analyst Andrew White recently pointed out, it's increasingly inaccurate to divide MDM this way.

This particular Magic Quadrant only looks only MDM solutions addressing customer data which, the report notes, were all labeled as Customer Data Integration solutions prior to 2008.

The MDM market for customer data grew about 22 percent in 2008, reaching a value of $370 million, according to Gartner. The predictions for 2009 aren't as rosy, however – Radcliffe cautioned that the economic slowdown also seems to be affecting MDM spending.

C'est la vie.

Destination CRM's summary provides an excellent overview of Gartner's assessment on the top customer data MDM vendors. But if you'd like a more detailed analysis of the pros and cons, as well as an explanation for how Gartner determined its rankings, the full report is currently available for free.