Business Intelligence & Analytics

Still waiting for data discovery … 2014 Gartner Magic Quadrant for BI and Analytics

Last week, I got my first copy of the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms. This year, I was a little disappointed in the progress in the BI market place.

The report was published on 20-February-2014. From my view, there was very little movement regarding data discovery and visualization. Other than the mention of using new types of data, I miss the topic of social media integration in the platform discussion. Finally, Gartner has separated the magic quadrant reports for Business Intelligence and Analytic Platforms from that of Predictive and Prescriptive Analytic. Last year, I was excited to see more emphasis on analytics in the BI discussion.

Regardless those points, the BI platform market was 14.1 billion USD in 2013 (up from 12.3 billion USD in 2012). According to Gartner, Information Technology (IT)-driven initiatives led the way with topics such as  centralized report production and platform standardization. Further trends were:

  • Embedded analytics within the BI platforms and BI platforms embedded into business applications and processes .
  • Analytical applications to leverage new types of data such as location data and multi-structured data.

Nevertheless, my hope is restored since Gartner predicts, by 2015, “smart data discovery,” which includes natural-language query and search, automated, prescriptive advanced analytics and interactive data discovery capabilities, will be the most in-demand BI platform user experience paradigm. Although they do not guarantee the vendors will have the solution.

In addition, Gartner added support for big data sources and embedded analytics to the list of 15 capabilities that make up a BI and Analytic platform. They also note and predict the raise of cloud-based and subscription BI platforms.

Reference

Sallam, R. L., Tapadinhas, J., Parenteau,, J., Yuen, D., & Hostmann, B. (2014). Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms. Gartner.