Gartner and Business Intelligence Magic Thing
February 14, 2016
I love consultants, especially mid tier consultants. The idea is that folks who are reasonably pleasant can become experts in various market sectors is a signal that optimism is alive and thriving in a sketchy economic swamp.
The mid tier consultants are a fave. These outfits provide more tradition than the webmaster or Visual Basic programmer who is out of a job. The ease with which one can become a consultant lends a certain squishiness to Lone Rangers offering expertise for hire.
The blue chip outfit are just too expensive for many folks who know they need help. Think of the difference between someone who jets to Lyon for lunch and the person who grabs a slice in Midtown.
Thus, blue chip outfits (the top drawer firms), the azure chip firms (companies either on their way up or down in the expertise Great Chain of Being), and the gray chip folks. The gray chip folks are the disaffected middle school teacher who decides to become a self appointed expert in sponsored content for search engine optimization.
The write up “Critiquing the Gartner BI and Analytics MQ” will not elicit much of a response from the mid tier outfit responsible for the “analysis.” Legal eagles slap when the actual quadrant thing is reproduced.
But the write up hits some nerves in the sagging neck of the azure chip services firm; for example:
- Companies excluded for no apparent reason. (Maybe these outfits rejected the azure chip firm’s blandishments to buy services and be better understood?)
- A “kitchen sink” approach. (Maybe this means dumping stuff into a container and binge watching Happy Days on Hulu? Stuff breaks when hasty hands place dirty dishes in a sink.)
- Products are mixed up. The example is Design Studio. (Aren’t these software components pretty much the same? Sure they are, gentle mid tier consultant getting smart by searching Google for info. Sure they are.)
- Inconsistency. (The write up displays actual, high value, super secret, for some eyes only magic thingies. I looked at each graph and was confused in terms of what was presented and how the classifications changed in the span of one fiscal year. Aren’t I the dunce?)
The write up is not about hell fire and brimstone. Here’s the peace offering after the carpet bombing:
To be fair on Gartner, they have made a solid effort at explaining their rationale and, given there are some 500 vendors globally, vying for attention, narrowing down to this selection is a valiant effort. The care with which Gartner has made its understanding known is also commendable, even if some of those explanations are questionable. Another problem with the report is that it is static. It is a snapshot at a point in time that is biased in favor of one constituency and which does not, in my view, adequately recognize the necessary and sometimes difficult tensions that exist between IT and lines of business when it comes to rationalizing or consolidating BI tools in an enterprise setting. I think Gartner has done the industry a major favor by decoupling the reporting element and focusing upon the modern approach to BI. But that’s not enough.
Maybe another azure chip outfit will leap into this opportunity. A mere 500 vendors. The number seems low to me. I eagerly await the next intellectual semi-truck load of insights from the azure chip sector. Yes, eager am I.
Stephen E Arnold, February 14, 2016
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