Gartner published the 2020 Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms in February 2020, with no changes to the leaders’ quadrant. IBM disagrees with Gartner’s criteria, evaluation and ranking of vendors since it over-emphasizes self-service data visualization and under-weighs enterprise reporting. But there is good news, Gartner states data visualization is becoming commoditized and highlights 2 emerging areas of differentiation: Integrated support for enterprise reporting capabilities and augmented analytics both of which Cognos Analytics supports today.
IBM improved on ability to execute, which is largely driven by positive client feedback. According to Gartner’s Peer Insights, client reviews in the last 12 months rank Cognos Analytics at 4.3/5 vs the leaders who average 4.4/5. This is a much narrower gap than the MQ portrays. The Cognos write-up is positive compared to other vendors highlighting three key areas: comprehensive functionality, product vision and, deployment options.
The cautions identified about IBM are easy to refute, specifically with respect to loss of momentum and perception as innovator, rareness of use as sole enterprise standard and pricing.
Note that Gartner’s cautions on the “leaders” in the MQ are are much more serious compared to cautions on IBM and cast doubt on each of these vendor’s ability to deliver.
Read this blog on the IBM Business Analytics Community to find out more about why IBM’s position on the scatter plot and Gartner’s written analysis are out of sync and why the 2020 MQ should make you feel good about IBM Cognos Analytics.
