Gartner positions Microsoft as the “Leader” in its Magic Quadrant for BI and Analytics Platforms

Microsoft’s Business Intelligence and Analytics platforms have earned a place in Gartner’s Leaders quadrant for the 10th consecutive year, serving to strengthen its existing leadership position and enable its customers to achieve more.

 Global research company Gartner has identified Microsoft as a market leader in its Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics platforms, for the second year in a row; with the company placed furthest on the right based for completeness of vision, and favourably positioned for ability to execute. This is also the tenth year that Microsoft has landed on the "Leader" quadrant. 

Gartner’s Magic Quadrant analysis series has long been regarded as a decision-makers’ touchstone for determining the quality of both strategy and delivery for market players. Across organisations, Business Intelligence (BI) is must tool for uncovering crucial insights amidst unstructured data and to provide agility in processes. Thanks to the regular development and customer-centric approach to ship cycles for Power BI, Microsoft has added hundreds of new features since it was made available in 2015. Microsoft has also announced that their second annual Microsoft Data Insights Summit will be held this year in Seattle during the month of June. 

The company’s placement in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant can be accredited to its innovation and “significant growth in both the vision axis and execution axis since the 2016 report.” Microsoft, encouraged by the progress made as a community, notes that Power BI is now available to more people than ever before.

“In a market that is constantly evolving with new innovations and technologies at an astounding pace, leaders must continue to develop products that not only serve in the present, but provide a robust future roadmap.” said Necip Ozyucel, Cloud and Enterprise Business Solutions Lead, Microsoft Gulf. “We are pleased to receive this recognition for our Power BI Analytics, and are determined to deliver solutions that cater to all types of users; enabling digital transformation through systems of intelligence that allow organisations to empower employees, engage customers, optimize operations and reinvent their products in order to achieve more.”

Power BI has an active community of over 200,000 users who have submitted more than 6,000 ideas since July 2015 as part of the community feedback. It is a suite of business analytics tools used to analyze data and share insights, with dashboards that provide a 360° degree view for business users. It allows professionals to have all their metrics in one place, updated in real time and available on all of their devices. With one click, users can explore the data behind their dashboard using intuitive tools that make finding answers easy.

The tool also provides easy adaption for Microsoft Office users by incorporating stunning visualization methods that enable clear identification of key business indicators. Microsoft is continuously innovating through regular feature updates, so that organisations seeking to stay ahead of the competition can leverage valuable insights by diving deep into their data and make smarter decisions.

According to an IDC report, Big Data & business analytics software worldwide revenues will grow from nearly $122B in 2015 to more than $187B in 2019, an increase of more than 50% over the five-year forecast period. The report further highlights that through 2020; spending on Cloud-Based Big Data and Analytics (BDA) Technology will grow 4.5x faster versus On-Premises Solutions.

Another IDC report states that 78% of enterprises are of view that their “collection and analysis of Big Data have the potential to change fundamentally the way they do business over the next 1 to 3 years”. Microsoft’s data platform strategy strives to empower customers to maximize the value derived from each byte of data they store and process. Power BI, which is part of the Azure IoT Suite and Cortana Intelligence Suite, delivers on that strategy by connecting customers’ data to Microsoft’s full data platform, enabling them to easily use other Microsoft data solutions; including the predictive analytics capabilities of Azure Machine Learning or Azure Stream Analytics - to achieve business value faster.

The company attributes its success to its quest for constant innovations delivered in all of its offerings. In future, Microsoft is planning to bring SharePoint Integration and Conversational BI on Power BI mobile apps(Ios). With Big Data becoming one of the key drivers of digital transformation, Power BI’s real-time streaming datasets, coupled with its ability to output data from Azure Stream Analytics, will further serve to strengthen Microsoft’s existing leadership position and help its customers achieve more.

About Microsoft Gulf

Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) is the leading platform and productivity company for the mobile-first, cloud-first world, and its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. . Microsoft Gulf opened its Dubai-based headquarters in 1991. Microsoft Gulf today oversees Microsoft activities in Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, the UAE and Yemen. Microsoft Corporation's address on the World Wide Web is: www.microsoft.com Microsoft Middle East's Web site is www.microsoft.com/middleeast