How To Read Gartner’s AI, BI & Data Reports & Predictions

March Madness is about to start. And this one is NOT about Basketball.

If you’re a CIO or an executive in charge of AI, BI & Data investments, your calendar is about to get taken over by read-out sessions of analysts’ reports and predictions.

March will be heavy in market research and events too. Gartner has 3 major conferences on the topic of BI, AI and Data in the next 4 weeks and O’Reilly has 2.

All of this is supposed to help your investment agenda. If you use the information correctly...

If you’re a CIO or an executive in charge of AI, BI & Data investments, your calendar is about to get taken over by read-out sessions of analysts’ reports and predictions.

Let's start with Gartner's predictions. In a press release today, the research firm issued some great ones for 'Augmented' Analytics', 'Augmented Data Management' and 'Continuous Intelligence':

• Augmented Analytics: "the next wave of disruption" and "the dominant driver of new purchases of analytics and BI by 2020." 
• Augmented Data Management: "through to the end of 2022, data management manual tasks will be reduced by 45 % through the addition of Machine Learning."
• Continuous intelligence: "a design pattern in which real-time analytics are integrated within a business operation (...) will be incorporated by more than half of major new business systems by 2022"

"By 2020, augmented analytics will be a dominant driver of new purchases of analytics and BI"

But, the biggest research work of all is the series of Gartner’s Magic Quadrants. The research firm has already released a set of them and I’ll let you read them on your own. But in the meantime, I thought I’d share some guidance on HOW to read these reports so you can maximize their value.

The first post I’d like to point to is Cindi Howson’s, one of Gartner’s most respected Vice Presidents and a long-time experts in the field. This past week, she shared guidance that I think is well worth reading through.

If you had to decide on a major surgery, would you get a second opinion before going in? You’re about to spend millions in Data, AI and BI...get a second opinion!

Here is the digest for it below. I’m putting her advice in quotes. My commentary follows it. Readers of the research piece should avoid:

1. “Looking only at the graphic”.  This is very sage advice. Every year the quadrants come in, bloggers and vendors repost the graphic without much explanation. While the visual is a great aid, the picture is not a good summary for the depth of research Gartner produces. So, read the full report!
2. “Assuming ‘completeness of vision’ is only the product roadmap”. This is critical. The Magic Quadrant is a full review of a vendor’s business. Gartner doesn’t just look at product but they also look at all the factors that impacts a vendor’s performance: market understanding, support...etc
3. “Reading the MQ via a PDF”. This has to be one of the coolest features in their research portal. The Magic Quadrant tool is interactive! Each dimension that determined a vendor’s dot position is available as a slider on their portal. So, if you’re a Gartner client, you can go to the tool, slide left to right and watch a vendor's position move.
4. “Using Only the MQ”. There is a lot of research that feeds into the Magic Quadrant. Have your team take a look at it. Also, don’t forget the other analyst firms. Be sure to get multiple perspectives. If you had to decide on a major surgery, would you get a second opinion before going in? You’re about to potentially spend millions in Data, AI and Analytics technology. This will affect your team competitiveness and potentially your career. Get a second opinion!

Worldwide Spending on Data Analytics is expected to pass $104B in 2022.

Beyond Cindi’s great advice, I thought I’d add a few more of my own:

1. Step back before you read the details: before jumping into the analysis provided for each vendor, take a holistic view of the quadrant. Study the Quadrant image and ask. Who's new, Who's been dropped...and why?
2. Read planning assumptions: this shouldn't be too hard since the "Strategic Planning Assumptions" section is on the first page of the document. These assumptions give you a good sense for the context within which analysts are operating. Gartner analysts field thousands of customer queries a year. They pick up customer "themes" along the way. Educate yourself here so you can see the space through their eyes (or at least, attempt to!).
3. Read the Evaluation Criteria Section: there you'll understand the mental model analysts rely on as they evaluate the various vendors. Each vendor is evaluated against 8 criteria: market understanding, marketing strategy, sales strategy, product strategy, business model, vertical (or industry strategy) as well as innovation and geography strategy. Take a look at the weights assigned for each category and compare them to what matters the most to YOU. I can't emphasize YOU more. The Magic Quadrant is a simplification tool that should help you guide your buying process. You need to relate the analysis to YOUR company, YOUR goals, YOUR environment, the skillset of YOUR team...and YOUR strategy. This goes back to Cindi’s rule: “Reading the MQ via a PDF”
4. Consider Gartner's "Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria": the fact that Gartner didn't include a vendor in their Quadrant doesn't mean you shouldn't look at them! It means that the vendor didn't meet some of Gartner's inclusion criteria. It could also and most likely mean that the vendor CHOSE to not be included. I participated in many Gartner Magic Quadrant efforts while I was at BusinessObjects, Microsoft, Sisense and Alpine Data. The effort required to do it well is tremendous. Sometimes, vendors decide to not go through the process because they don't have the time, the resources or don't agree with the dimensions that impact the MQ.

I hope the above helps. For more real time information on what's going with the Gartner Data & Analytics Summit 2019 going on this week, follow #gartnerdata. Or better yet, follow my good friend Jen Underwood. She's been posting her impressions online as the conference is going on. You'll find some great nuggets such as this year's key themes ("Data Driven", "Privacy" and "AI") or the fact that Worldwide Spending on Data Analytics is expected to pass $104B in 2022!

See you in at the Gartner London and Orlando Conferences! In the meantime,

Analytically Yours!

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References:

1. Gartner’s Press Release: Gartner Identifies Top 10 Data and Analytics Technology Trends for 2019
2. Cindi’s post on guidance. Be sure to like it! (she also authored a longer post on Gartner’s blog channel here last year).