With the recent release of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence, in which Microsoft is in the Leaders quadrant for the 12th year in a row, I felt that perhaps it was time to do an analysis of what has changed in recent history. The idea was to determine, who is winning and who is losing? And what better tool to use than Power BI?!?!
For a more complete write-up of how I built this data story, along with further analysis and commentary, check out my LinkedIn blog post, Who is Winning? Who is Losing? Power BI vs. Tableau vs. Qlik.
To accomplish this, I tracked down the last 3 years of Gartner Magic Quadrants online and printed them out. Then, using a highly advanced data gathering tool, the trusty ruler, I was able to measure and normalize the data. Each Magic Quadrant I had was, of course, a different size. The basic process went like this:
- Measure the total X and Y size of the Magic Quandrant using millimeters and the inside, lower left-hand corner as 0,0 and the inside, upper right-hand corner as max X and max Y
- Measure the X and Y position of the three perennial Leaders, Microsoft, Tableau and Qlik relative to the lower, left-hand corner
Once these measurements were made and input into Power BI, the rest were some relatively straight-forward calculations.
- Normalize the data by calculating the % of the total X and Y size of each Magic Quandrant for each company and year
- Calculate the “velocity” or rate of change between years
- Determine the total velocity via Pythagorean’s theorem
- Determine the % growth in velocity change year over year (acceleration)
Through this effort, some interesting observations can be made as well as being able to sub-segment the Leaders quadrant into its own magic quadrant.
What’s the take-away? Who are the winners and losers? Well, let the data speak for itself!
Greg Deckler 