Piecing Together the Gartner CPM Magic Quadrant Results

Well, we knew when we broke for the holidays that the Garnter CPM magic quadrant release were just days from coming out. We deliberated about doing a post-festivus alert, but knowing that everyone was quickly headed out of town, decided that the world would have to wait with bated breath for our in-depth analysis of the latest results.

Now while we're not able to actually publish the quad itself, it being copyrighted and all, it's pretty easy to piece together where the main players fell out in the mix based on the 55 font type press releases and wire service reports that have been pinging our inboxes every day since the results were announced.

The big winners:

Oracle/Hyperion: The combination of the two companies nearly complete, they make for a compelling offering in the CPM space; and with the long-time leadership of Hyperion, this one was a no-brainer. Oracle has been on quite a roll lately, racking up leadership awards from all the main analyst firms. Now whether they all equate to Oracle being #1 in BI is another story, but there's no question that the BI pieces have come together for them in the past year.

Cognos: Although their acquisition of Applix was not fully factored into the mix, Cognos was positioned in the leaders quadrant this year, as they have in every year since the quad was released. Another strong showing from Team Ottawa in their last quad as an independent vendor. As IBM has not been represented on the quad in the past, expect the big name change in the leader's quadrant for next year.

Business Objects: The big mover this past year, BOBJ was also positioned strongly in the leaders quadrant, along with soon-to-be lord and master SAP. The combination of the two company's offerings should make this coming year's competition interesting, product roadmap challenges not withstanding. As has been well documented, the Business Objects strategy of buying their way into the leadership position with acquistions of SRC, ALG, and finally Cartesis was enough to push them over the top.

Not-so-Big Winners:
Now while everyone's a winner in our book, you can always tell these companies by the fact that they don't rush out press releases touting the fact that they came in behind the pack, like, for instance...

SAS: Nope, move along, nothing to see here. SAS isn't exactly touting the fact that they aren't in the leaders quadrant again this year, something that must be disappointing to them, seeing as they are rated about the same as they were in 2006--close, but actually falling a bit behind the new leaders given how much the market has changed.

Microsoft: We should really label Team Redmond as having an "incomplete" this time around, as Gartner points out in their review that the PerformancePoint Server product was not fully taken into account into the evalutation, as the product was not actually out in the market in-time to hit the cut-off date. As such, Microsoft was dinged a bit on their ability to execute, but those of you with the quad in your hand will recognize the rightward tilt of the completeness of vision that vendors fight most with Gartner on that they actually did pretty well on. With a full year of PPS selling and positioning in the marketplace, it will be interesting to see how much MSFT is able to move in the coming year.

Other Miscellan-ee-i that we can disclose and have opinions on:

--Total number of vendors in leaders quadrant in 2007 vs. 2006: 4 vs. 2
--Total number of vendors on the quad in 2007 vs. 2006: 13 vs. 16 (so much for all-consuming consolidation)
--Biggest winner: I'll go with SAP actually. If you compare last year's and this year's measurements, while Hyperion/Oracle and Cognos are still clearly the leaders, their position really didn't change that much. However, with Business Objects moving into the leaders quadrant along with SAP, they are well positioned for a strong year, again pending product issues (and those are huge, by the way, so while I don't discount them, they are well set up)
--Biggest loser: Has to be SAS. They were so close last year to the leaders quad, and barely moved up this year, actually losing ground to several competitors. Getting to be a tough market!
--Vendor to watch: I'll leave aside the obvious choice in Microsoft, and actually go with Infor. Their completeness of vision continues to move right, and they themselves are getting very close to the upper right region.
--Off-the-wall New Year prediction: This is the last year for a stand-alone CPM quad--there's already rumblings that it will be BI and CPM next year--we shall see!