Another fact we retrieve from Gartner report is that business users have been driving final investment decisions more and more, which we have been already talking about this regarding to our own projects. Within more than 50 projects in 2 years, our main sponsors or driver units were mainly business, just supported by IT, which is supposed to this though.
Nothing surprised that QlikTech is now in one the leaders in Gartner Magic Quadrant 2011, which will be published during
Gartner BI Summit 2011 next in London. I personally think that Analyst companies’ reports, quadrants, circles, hypes, researches are definitely valuable; nevertheless, people many times exaggerate when they read these reports. At the end of the day, they are not more than knowledge or information about market, tools etc. If you are person who like to do research, read, listen, do hands on projects etc, you may be your own analyst
J . I would like to write some of my initial comments after taking a look the report. I will likely have another writing later on to complete the points I have not mentioned in this article .
I was personally happy see that some points in the reports proved
my comments placed in QlikView’s blog with interview with me by Erica Driver, since I had mentioned about “fun, happiness” in the blog article. Yes, everything is changing and new generation, new user profile would like have more fun even while working. Me too
J Again, if you closely follow the market, it is expected result. My Depiction placed in
Dashboard Insight’s article will continue to be discussed in BI for some time.
QlikTech has been pushing the term ”simplicity” for years ,which may be sometimes even too much, but what we have seen now at Gartner BI Report 2011 is that Simplicity has become surpassing need-functionality. In this case, the only comment we may provide is “RESPECT” to QlikTech. As a father of the term of simplicity, QlikTech deserves necessary respect; .However, it is not enough to only mention, it is also big responsibility for them to carry on supporting simplicity with ultimate functionality and complying with missing or required /criticized components for simplicity in big BI picture. E.g. Predictive modeling, better metadata management (despite it is not even an issue many times) , Budgeting and planning is also big pain of business users. Bringing such simplicity and agile implementation with QlikView may be just great. Although it is not priority of the company at the moment, I cannot resist myself to think about those.
Gartner has paid special attention to Data Discovery Tools ‘ importance as well as why discovery tools are the first priority of business users’ choice. Again, what we have been telling with QlikView approach, traditional report centric approach is not useless, but it became just less effective, rather than information centric approach with high volume of dedicated business unit data based on business functions. It was almost inevitable fact to go this way anyway. However, buying behaviors from IT site still continues with total different perspectives heavily in IT centric strategy. It may be improper to say that business users’ freedom and strong impact on buying discovery tools and crating another segment in Business Intelligence arena just reminds me “what is happening in Egypt, Tunia, Algeria “.. Yes, because business users were sick of waiting necessary solutions or values from BI platforms, although industry called ” Business Intelligence” . Of course, business users do this investing their budget and implementing it by themselves, rather than going rally in the market
J
Although I like the idea of standardization, I have never believed this term in core Business Intelligence world. Which standardization? Almost all core historical BI vendors even before strong acquisition period; they had also done some small or big acquisitions, which also required technical integration periods. I always say “ There is no impossible integration in current technology world, the most important one is how east and fast you do this from business and technology perspectives. “ The reason I have mentioned standardization is Gartner reports also mentions that Standardization is not first concern commonly anymore; pragmatic approach for complying the needs are first priority. Again, there is always best way to do things, innovation always driver BI arena as long as it solves business problems. It does not have to be perfect or miracle though, as what remote-control of TV just makes life easy!
I am not sure how the rest of the world looks at but in our market usually does not allow people to say “ you are right”, “ you did a good job “ “Allow” may be proper work , let’s say that they think that they are potentially offended by copying or imitating an idea. My personal believes was always vice versa. If you cannot innovate or make it, you just imitate the one you like and do your best to improve it , bring your way. There is typical example for this. We have grown with Yahoo, AltaVista or other search engines but now google is almost in every language as VERB! What they have done is they just come up with their own way, but the idea was not new. As far as I am concerned, Gartner first time uses word “imitate or copy” for big vendors, which is not a shame or something to judge. On the contrary, they must raise bar, do better. I am sure they will come up with better things in the future.
What I like the most in 2011 ‘s MQ reports that I find it more brave comments than before . One of the examples is that they mention unhappy and unsatisfied business users, customers for Oracle, SAP, IBM , MS. What we have told in our BI market is that business users are the king. You can be successful as long as you make them happy. That is why QlikTech’s fastest growth in MQ is not surprising; in fact, QlikTech might be the first couple ones if there is dedicated user satisfaction MQ. (There was a report that shows this, as IDC has )
Gartner underlines increasing new for forecasting, predictive modeling , optimization. I believe that this is a strong challenge for QlikTech, but they can definitely turn this into an advantage adding similar simplicity advantage to their platform, which is definitely possible. Once it is done, QlikView will continue to be strong player in the market , despite potential acquisition risk or only focus on BI arena strategy.
Mobile and Mashups have been obvious direction for some time, which almost all vendors have been focusing to come up with new faces.
When I joined to Gartner BI summit in 2009 at Amsterdam, There was again question and comments for SaaS . I had not believed at that time that BI SaaS will not grow as they predict . Current reports also mentions slow growth rate. There are many reasons for this in addition to each local market dynamics. BI market has been talking about culture for sometime, which is one aspect of this issue too.
Collaboration and collaborative Decision making will be hot issue in upcoming years. In fact, I personally expect more niche vendors in this area. Some niche vendors have already emerged. Unstructured data issue will be getting more and more issue with Social Media and Analytics Data. Business users expect that BI vendors will have some functionalities but again I believe that new and niche vendors will do job much more better than others within the fact “exceptions do not break the rules “ :)
I would like to remind one important criterion for Business intelligence after reading the report. Yes, market consolidations caused strong dissatisfaction in the market. Yes, big vendors focused on integration. Yes, new niche players have come along positive way etc. We should not forget the fact that traditional guys have experienced these as well, they had already passed this root. They were extremely good for business, support and other criteria in the past. This is like a construction a shape with Play card . You may do something very good, simple mistakes (like simplicity
J) cause serious problem. While some BI guys might have spent some necessary time, they have an ability to turn everything into much more positive way. This is the issue of CEO or C level people to launch strong effective project. I still do hope positive things though. As BI professional, I do like positive progress from all vendors regardless of the name. In any case, I touched several of them, and the rests are represented by our friends anyways
J
For my preliminary comment for Gartner Reports, I suppose it is enough for now, let give some time for next blog article after listening all the buzz, objections, critics ..
