Magic Quadrant for Analytics and
Business Intelligence Platforms
Published 11 February 2019 - ID G00354763 - 109 min read
Modern analytics and BI platforms are now mainstream purchases for which key
differentiators are augmented analytics and support for Mode 1 reporting in a single
platform. This Magic Quadrant will help data and analytics leaders complement their
existing solutions or move to an entirely new vendor.
Strategic Planning Assumptions
By 2020, augmented analytics will be a dominant driver of new purchases of analytics
and business intelligence, data science and machine learning platforms, and embedded
analytics.
By 2020, 50% of analytical queries either will be generated via search, natural language
processing or voice, or will be automatically generated.
By 2020, organizations that offer users access to a curated catalog of internal and
external data will derive twice as much business value from analytics investments as
those that do not.
By 2020, the number of data and analytics experts in business units will grow at three
times the rate of experts in IT departments, which will force companies to rethink their
organizational models and skill sets.
By 2021, natural language processing and conversational analytics will boost analytics
and business intelligence adoption from 35% of employees to over 50%, including new
classes of users, particularly front-office workers.
Market Definition/Description
Modern analytics and business intelligence (BI) platforms are characterized by easy-to-
use tools that support the full analytic workflow — from data preparation and ingestion
to visual exploration and insight generation. They are most differentiated from traditional
BI platforms by not requiring significant involvement from IT staff to predefine data
models or store data in traditional data warehouses (see “Technology Insight for
Modern Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms”). The emphasis is on self-
service and agility. Most modern analytics and BI platforms also have their own self-
contained in-memory columnar engine to ensure fast performance and support rapid
prototyping, but many can optionally use existing modeled data sources. The growing
use of data lakes and logical data warehouses dovetails with the capabilities of modern
Page 1 of 75
,analytics and BI platforms that can ingest data from these less-modeled data sources
Page 2 of 75
, (see “The Practical Logical Data Warehouse: A Strategic Plan for a Modern Data
Management Solution for Analytics”).
The crowded analytics and BI market includes everything from long-standing and large
technology players to startups backed by venture capital and smaller, privately funded
software vendors. Vendors of traditional BI platforms have evolved their capabilities to
include modern, visual-based data discovery that also includes governance, and more
recently, augmented analytics. Newer vendors continue to evolve the capabilities that
once focused primarily on agility, by extending them to enable greater governance and
scalability, as well as publishing and sharing. The holy grail is for customers to have
both Mode 1 and Mode 2 capabilities (see Note 1) in a single, seamless platform that
draws on existing assets but also has emerging best-of-breed capabilities.
As disruptive as visual-based data discovery has been to traditional BI, a third wave of
disruption has emerged in the form of augmented analytics, with machine learning (ML)
generating insights on increasingly vast amounts of data. Augmented analytics also
includes natural language processing (NLP) as a way of querying data and of
generating narratives to explain drivers and graphics. Vendors that have augmented
analytics as a differentiator are better able to command premium prices for their
products (see “Augmented Analytics Is the Future of Data and Analytics”).
This Magic Quadrant focuses on products that meet Gartner’s criteria for a modern
analytics and BI platform (see “Technology Insight for Modern Analytics and Business
Intelligence Platforms”). It is this type of platform that accounts for the majority of net
new mainstream purchases in the analytics and BI platform market. Products that do
not meet our criteria for a modern platform — either because of the upfront
requirements for IT to predefine data models, or because they are reporting-centric —
are covered in our “Market Guide for Traditional Enterprise Reporting Platforms.”
This Magic Quadrant refers throughout to composite measures of success based on a
survey of vendors’ reference customers. Reference customers scored vendors on each
of the metrics defined in Note 2 (see also the Evidence section). Opinions from Gartner
Peer Insights contributors are also factored into our assessments; these contributors
are referred to as Gartner Peer Insights reviewers.
The Five Use Cases and 15 Critical Capabilities of an
Analytics and BI Platform
We define and assess product capabilities across the following five use cases:
• Agile, centralized BI provisioning: Supports an agile IT-enabled workflow, from data to
centrally delivered and managed analytic content, using the platform’s self-contained
data management capabilities.
• Decentralized analytics: Supports a workflow from data to self-service analytics, and
includes analytics for individual business units and users.
• Governed data discovery: Supports a workflow from data to self-service analytics to
system of record (SOR), IT-managed content with governance, reusability and
promotability of user-generated content to certified data and analytics content.
Page 3 of 75
, • OEM or embedded analytics: Supports a workflow from data to embedded BI content in
a process or application.
• Extranet deployment: Supports a workflow similar to agile, centralized BI provisioning
for the external customer or, in the public sector, citizen access to analytic content.
We assess vendors on the 15 critical capabilities listed below. (Any changes to the
previous year’s critical capabilities are listed in Note 3. Subcriteria for each capability
are published in “Toolkit: Analytics and BI Platform RFP.” How well vendors’ platforms
support these critical capabilities is explored in greater detail in “Critical Capabilities for
Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms.”)
Infrastructure
1. BI platform administration, security and architecture: Capabilities that enable platform
security, administering of users, auditing of platform access and utilization, and high
availability and disaster recovery.
2. Cloud BI: Platform-as-a-service and analytic-application-as-a-service capabilities for
building, deploying and managing analytics and analytic applications in the cloud,
based on data both in the cloud and on-premises.
3. Data source connectivity and ingestion: Capabilities that enable users to connect to
structured and unstructured data contained within various types of storage platform
(relational and nonrelational), both on-premises and in the cloud.
Data Management
4. Metadata management: Tools enabling users to leverage a common semantic
model and metadata. These should provide a robust and centralized way for
administrators to search, capture, store, reuse and publish metadata objects such as
dimensions, hierarchies, measures, performance metrics/key performance indicators
(KPIs), and to report layout objects, parameters and so on. Administrators should have
the ability to promote a business-user-defined data mashup and metadata to the SOR
metadata.
5. Data storage and loading options: Platform capabilities for accessing, integrating,
transforming and loading data into a self-contained performance engine, with the
ability to index data, manage data loads and refresh scheduling.
6. Data preparation: “Drag and drop” user-driven data combination of different sources,
and the creation of analytic models such as user-defined measures, sets, groups and
hierarchies. Advanced capabilities include machine learning-enabled semantic
autodiscovery, intelligent joins, intelligent profiling, hierarchy generation, data lineage
and data blending on varied data sources, including multistructured data.
7. Scalability and data model complexity: The degree to which the in-memory engine or
in-database architecture handles high volumes of data, complex data models,
performance optimization and large user deployments.
Analysis and Content Creation
8. Advanced analytics for citizen data scientists: Enables users to easily access
advanced analytics capabilities that are self-contained within the platform, through
Page 4 of 75
Business Intelligence Platforms
Published 11 February 2019 - ID G00354763 - 109 min read
Modern analytics and BI platforms are now mainstream purchases for which key
differentiators are augmented analytics and support for Mode 1 reporting in a single
platform. This Magic Quadrant will help data and analytics leaders complement their
existing solutions or move to an entirely new vendor.
Strategic Planning Assumptions
By 2020, augmented analytics will be a dominant driver of new purchases of analytics
and business intelligence, data science and machine learning platforms, and embedded
analytics.
By 2020, 50% of analytical queries either will be generated via search, natural language
processing or voice, or will be automatically generated.
By 2020, organizations that offer users access to a curated catalog of internal and
external data will derive twice as much business value from analytics investments as
those that do not.
By 2020, the number of data and analytics experts in business units will grow at three
times the rate of experts in IT departments, which will force companies to rethink their
organizational models and skill sets.
By 2021, natural language processing and conversational analytics will boost analytics
and business intelligence adoption from 35% of employees to over 50%, including new
classes of users, particularly front-office workers.
Market Definition/Description
Modern analytics and business intelligence (BI) platforms are characterized by easy-to-
use tools that support the full analytic workflow — from data preparation and ingestion
to visual exploration and insight generation. They are most differentiated from traditional
BI platforms by not requiring significant involvement from IT staff to predefine data
models or store data in traditional data warehouses (see “Technology Insight for
Modern Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms”). The emphasis is on self-
service and agility. Most modern analytics and BI platforms also have their own self-
contained in-memory columnar engine to ensure fast performance and support rapid
prototyping, but many can optionally use existing modeled data sources. The growing
use of data lakes and logical data warehouses dovetails with the capabilities of modern
Page 1 of 75
,analytics and BI platforms that can ingest data from these less-modeled data sources
Page 2 of 75
, (see “The Practical Logical Data Warehouse: A Strategic Plan for a Modern Data
Management Solution for Analytics”).
The crowded analytics and BI market includes everything from long-standing and large
technology players to startups backed by venture capital and smaller, privately funded
software vendors. Vendors of traditional BI platforms have evolved their capabilities to
include modern, visual-based data discovery that also includes governance, and more
recently, augmented analytics. Newer vendors continue to evolve the capabilities that
once focused primarily on agility, by extending them to enable greater governance and
scalability, as well as publishing and sharing. The holy grail is for customers to have
both Mode 1 and Mode 2 capabilities (see Note 1) in a single, seamless platform that
draws on existing assets but also has emerging best-of-breed capabilities.
As disruptive as visual-based data discovery has been to traditional BI, a third wave of
disruption has emerged in the form of augmented analytics, with machine learning (ML)
generating insights on increasingly vast amounts of data. Augmented analytics also
includes natural language processing (NLP) as a way of querying data and of
generating narratives to explain drivers and graphics. Vendors that have augmented
analytics as a differentiator are better able to command premium prices for their
products (see “Augmented Analytics Is the Future of Data and Analytics”).
This Magic Quadrant focuses on products that meet Gartner’s criteria for a modern
analytics and BI platform (see “Technology Insight for Modern Analytics and Business
Intelligence Platforms”). It is this type of platform that accounts for the majority of net
new mainstream purchases in the analytics and BI platform market. Products that do
not meet our criteria for a modern platform — either because of the upfront
requirements for IT to predefine data models, or because they are reporting-centric —
are covered in our “Market Guide for Traditional Enterprise Reporting Platforms.”
This Magic Quadrant refers throughout to composite measures of success based on a
survey of vendors’ reference customers. Reference customers scored vendors on each
of the metrics defined in Note 2 (see also the Evidence section). Opinions from Gartner
Peer Insights contributors are also factored into our assessments; these contributors
are referred to as Gartner Peer Insights reviewers.
The Five Use Cases and 15 Critical Capabilities of an
Analytics and BI Platform
We define and assess product capabilities across the following five use cases:
• Agile, centralized BI provisioning: Supports an agile IT-enabled workflow, from data to
centrally delivered and managed analytic content, using the platform’s self-contained
data management capabilities.
• Decentralized analytics: Supports a workflow from data to self-service analytics, and
includes analytics for individual business units and users.
• Governed data discovery: Supports a workflow from data to self-service analytics to
system of record (SOR), IT-managed content with governance, reusability and
promotability of user-generated content to certified data and analytics content.
Page 3 of 75
, • OEM or embedded analytics: Supports a workflow from data to embedded BI content in
a process or application.
• Extranet deployment: Supports a workflow similar to agile, centralized BI provisioning
for the external customer or, in the public sector, citizen access to analytic content.
We assess vendors on the 15 critical capabilities listed below. (Any changes to the
previous year’s critical capabilities are listed in Note 3. Subcriteria for each capability
are published in “Toolkit: Analytics and BI Platform RFP.” How well vendors’ platforms
support these critical capabilities is explored in greater detail in “Critical Capabilities for
Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms.”)
Infrastructure
1. BI platform administration, security and architecture: Capabilities that enable platform
security, administering of users, auditing of platform access and utilization, and high
availability and disaster recovery.
2. Cloud BI: Platform-as-a-service and analytic-application-as-a-service capabilities for
building, deploying and managing analytics and analytic applications in the cloud,
based on data both in the cloud and on-premises.
3. Data source connectivity and ingestion: Capabilities that enable users to connect to
structured and unstructured data contained within various types of storage platform
(relational and nonrelational), both on-premises and in the cloud.
Data Management
4. Metadata management: Tools enabling users to leverage a common semantic
model and metadata. These should provide a robust and centralized way for
administrators to search, capture, store, reuse and publish metadata objects such as
dimensions, hierarchies, measures, performance metrics/key performance indicators
(KPIs), and to report layout objects, parameters and so on. Administrators should have
the ability to promote a business-user-defined data mashup and metadata to the SOR
metadata.
5. Data storage and loading options: Platform capabilities for accessing, integrating,
transforming and loading data into a self-contained performance engine, with the
ability to index data, manage data loads and refresh scheduling.
6. Data preparation: “Drag and drop” user-driven data combination of different sources,
and the creation of analytic models such as user-defined measures, sets, groups and
hierarchies. Advanced capabilities include machine learning-enabled semantic
autodiscovery, intelligent joins, intelligent profiling, hierarchy generation, data lineage
and data blending on varied data sources, including multistructured data.
7. Scalability and data model complexity: The degree to which the in-memory engine or
in-database architecture handles high volumes of data, complex data models,
performance optimization and large user deployments.
Analysis and Content Creation
8. Advanced analytics for citizen data scientists: Enables users to easily access
advanced analytics capabilities that are self-contained within the platform, through
Page 4 of 75
