Microsoft Gets Gartner’s Business Intelligence Top Ranking

This tie into the post from a few weeks ago about Microsoft being placed in the leaders quadrant in the way of business intelligence. Per the article, Business Objects and Cognos have long been considered the leaders in business intelligence platforms. But in a surprising new report, Gartner ranks Microsoft ahead of those companies in its ability to execute.

Business Objects, Cognos, and Microsoft were placed among the leaders in Gartner's just-released Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms, 2008. But the research firm placed Microsoft above the other two in its ability to execute, including the competitiveness and success of its BI goods and services, its viability and investment in BI, and the execution of its sales and pricing. In last year's BI platform report, Gartner put Microsoft in the challenger quadrant.

Gartner is demonstrating how quickly BI is moving from a specialized, expensive technology into a commodity itself. The rapidly commoditizing BI market, many industry observers believe, is among the reasons Business Objects accepted a $6.8 billion buyout offer from SAP and Cognos took a $5 billion buyout offer from IBM.

Read the entire article from Information Week here.

Have a great weekend!