Leading global analyst provider Gartner has recently confirmed the release of it’s latest Magic Quadrant for Cloud Financial Planning and Analysis Solutions.

Analytics remains a vital element of new software technology, particularly within the last year. Gartner believes that automation will be the main driver for new product purchases over the next year within business intelligence and analytics, including data science and embedded BI. Gartner has also forecast that nearly half of all analytic queries to be performed via search, automation, voice or natural language.

The rise of natural language and conversation analytics will generate a new wave of technology users within the BI and Analytical arena. It is due to this uptake that Gartner believes we will experience a rise of nearly 15% of these tools in enterprises, with significant growth of data and analytics users within businesses. Analysts at Gartner also believe that this rate of growth will stimulate other innovative businesses to modify their business models.

The latest Gartner report outlines of the development of ‘modern’ analytics and business intelligence tools over the last few years. Traditional platforms are being transformed by the development of augmented analytics and machine learning, as well as the rise of visual-based data system providers. Gartner states that those leading the natural language processing arena are more likely to be capable of setting a higher pricing level for their products compared to their competitors.

In their latest Magic Quadrant, Gartner summarises the overall strengths and weaknesses of over 20 key providers, regarded as the most significant within their market. Gartner provides a graphical representation of vendor performance based on their overall ability to execute and their ability to reach their overall vision. The graph is split into four quadrants: nice players, challengers, visionaries, and leaders. 

Based on last year, Microsoft and Tableau were regarded as market leaders in this space. This year, Gartner has placed Microsoft in a more commanding lead, improving its position on the ‘ability to execute’ section of the Gartner graph. Microsoft provides excellent functions, especially for its price, enabling users to perform detailed analysis relatively easily. Gartner believes that Microsoft will remain a leader for some years to come. Tableau, however, has recently announced new natural language processing and automated data management services which strengthen its portfolio further.

Qlik maintained its leadership status based on Gartner’s definition of consisting of a strong product roadmap and its global reach compared to other competitors. Other mentioned businesses include ThoughSpot, a business that is leading the augmented analytics industry. The business raised nearly $150 million in new venture capital and released ThoughtSpot5 last year, containing its innovative voice-driven analytics systems referred to as SearchIQ.

In terms of challenges, Gartner highlight Microstrategy as a key business. The company has invested heavily in augmented analytic services and has received high customer scores based on its range of product capabilities. The system also enables detailed analysis of large data sets and recently launched a new offering which it describes as a ‘new class of enterprise intelligence’, known as HyperIntelligence.

WIthin the Visionaries section, Gartner highlight TIBCO Software, Sisense, and Salesforce as nearly equal leaders and all having the potential to be the leader in 2020. Gartner suggests that TIBCO showed the most improvement in the last year due to a number of recent acquisitions which have enabled them to expand their offering in data science and management. The business also improved its embedded analytics product and launched a new AI analytical tool known as Spotfire X. Sisense raises dits funding to $200 million showing its interest in acquiring enterprise-level customers. The business has emphasized its focus on machine learning and launched a new Data Cognition Engine that can understand large data volumes and can produce nearly instant analytical responses.

Within the Niche Players, this year are more traditional BI providers such as Oracle, IBM, and Board International, as well as more specialist embedded analytical providers like Logi Analytics and GoodData. One business, in particular, Looker, gained the highest increase within this section, ending the year with a growth funding round valued at $100 million. The business also released new integrations for data science workflows and new developer tools in Looker 6, as well as integration with Google BigQuery.