Gartner Inc. has released its assessment of integration
vendors using what it calls the “Magic Quadrant.”
Using “completeness of vision” as the X-axis and “ability to execute” as
the Y-axis, Gartner charted the main players in the business.
The “leaders” were those who were strong in each area; “niche players”
were those who were weaker in both; “challengers” were those whose ability to
execute exceeded their vision; and “visionaries” were the integrators who had
more vision than ability to execute.
In the leader category, one finds IBM, Informatica and SAP-Business Objects. Gartner said of them, “These vendors establish market trends, to a large degree, by providing new functional capabilities in their products, and by identifying new types of business problems where data integration tools can bring significant value. Examples of deployments that span multiple projects and types of use cases are commonplace in their customer base.”
Challengers were limited to Microsoft and Oracle. The report said, “Challengers in the data integration tools market are well positioned in light of the key trends in the market, such as the need to support multiple styles of data delivery. However, they may not provide comprehensive breadth of functionality, or they may be limited to specific technical environments or application domains.”
The visionaries were Pervasive Software, SAS, iWay
Software, Sun Microsystems and Tibeco Software.
Gartner said of them “Visionaries in the data integration tools market
will have a solid understanding of the key market trends and a position that is
well aligned with current demand, but they may lack market awareness or
credibility beyond their customer base or outside a single application domain,
or they may not provide a comprehensive set of product capabilities.”
Niche Players comprise Sybase (but Sybase is close to visionary status), Syncsort, ETI, Pitney Bowes Software and Open Text. They may possess good offerings for certain problems and within that segment they may deliver the goods. However, Gartner said they “have gaps in both vision and ability to execute, often lacking key aspects of product functionality and/or exhibiting a narrow focus within their own architecture and installed base. These vendors have little mind share in the market and are not recognized as proven providers of data integration tools for enterprise-class deployments.”
The full report is available at
http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/sas/vol5/article4/article4.html
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