Since the release of the Gartner 2020 Magic Quadrant, the extended team and I have fielded many questions about the positioning of Cognos relative to where are product is today. Below I would like to share a summary of the teams view on the latest MQ.
Gartner does it again!
Gartner published the 2020 Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms 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.
IBM Cautions
The cautions identified are easy to refute and rarely come up in sales cycles. Let’s take a look.
Loss of momentum and perception as innovator: The authors measure momentum based on Gartner client inquiries and searches. IBM clients rarely contact Gartner because they are not impressed with their market coverage and don’t see the value. Contrary, to Gartner’s perception, we continue to have solid annual growth with hundreds of new clients and thousands of new users.
On the innovation front we introduced many new capabilities that our competitors do not offer with more on the way for 2020. Native AI capabilities are infused across data prep, data exploration, dashboard creation and advanced analytics. Forecasting is far more advanced than the closest competitor as it extends across multiple series and is not limited to just line charts. Our new data science capabilities (Notebooks) are significantly more capable, secure and scalable than the competition.
Rareness of use as Sole Enterprise Standard: This caution is not unique to IBM, (Other MQ leaders are also called out for this) it is common practice today for many organizations have multiple enterprise standards. IBM and other analysts see a shift in the market towards governance as companies look to mitigate issues of data silos and disconnected applications.
Pricing: Our cloud pricing is more competitive against the market leaders profiled here as all the enterprise capabilities are offered out-of-the-box vs vendors who charge for add-ons and extensions. IBM’s lowest priced tier on cloud includes authoring vs read-only.
Gartner Cautions on the “leaders”
The cautions are much more serious and cast doubt on each of these vendor’s ability to deliver.
Rank 1: Significant functional gaps on-prem | No platform flexibility | Connectivity to on-prem dataRank 2: Weak governance and administration | Hidden costs of add-ons and extensionsRank 3: Less than 50% claim enterprise standard | Migration issues| Adoption of self-service authoring Rank 4: Numerous functional gaps | Limited global reach and community| Reliance on IT
This highlights that this MQ is a dangerous tool for a client looking to select an enterprise analytics platform.
Call to action
If you have the full report, always go beyond the picture and read it fully. Help us by sharing your positive feedback with Gartner directly (no cost) by completing the Gartner Peer Review at: https://www.gartner.com/reviews/survey/home
Of course, if you wish to provide feedback directly to the IBM team, please reach out or fill out an NPS survey.
Mike Norris Douglas Bonanno Chris McPherson
Director Offering Management Global Sales Leader Offering Management Leader
#CognosAnalyticswithWatson