Deciphering Gartner’s Magic Quadrant
yow wazzup guys, it’s me, ron so today, we are going to focus on Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for ALM.
ALM is now spreading which in turn makes software companies improve their efficiency in their development process as well as building and sustaining their engineering productivity.
As time goes on, a lot of developer tools and solutions are popping out – most of them are now in Agile/SCRUM.
Here are some of the leading Software Solutions that support ALM
Awesome, right? now, enough about ALM. Let’s now dive in to Gartner’s Magic Quadrant.
What are Magic Quadrants?
According to gartner.com:
Gartner Magic Quadrants are a culmination of research in a specific market, giving you a wide-angle view of the relative positions of the market’s competitors. By applying a graphical treatment and a uniform set of evaluation criteria, a Gartner Magic Quadrant quickly helps you digest how well technology providers are executing against their stated vision.
How Do Magic Quadrants Work?
According to gartner.com:
Magic Quadrants provide a graphical competitive positioning of four types of technology providers, where market growth is high and provider differentiation is distinct:
Leaders execute well against their current vision and are well positioned for tomorrow.
Visionaries understand where the market is going or have a vision for changing market rules, but do not yet execute well.
Niche Players focus successfully on a small segment, or are unfocused and do not out-innovate or outperform others.
Challengers execute well today or may dominate a large segment, but do not demonstrate an understanding of market direction.
Okay, so with that in mind, let’s now look into the Magic Quadrant for Application Lifecycle Management:
As mentioned, we have four (4) areas that we need to consider in deciphering the magic quadrant. We have the niche players, the visionaries, the challengers, and the leaders.
Niche Players:
- Micro Focus
- TechExcel
- Inflectra
- Rocket Software
These companies simply has the vision, and the ability to execute. But they tend to do it minimally, which in turn, other companies are outperforming them.
Visionaries:
- VersionOne
- PTC-MKS
- Serena Software
- Polarion Software
- ThoughtWorks
- Parasoft
These companies really know how to drive the ALM Business. They simply has the idea. The problem here is that they tend to lack the ability to execute.
Challengers:
- HP
Yes, the only company in the Challengers area. This means they really know how to execute and drive the ALM business. They have products that has ALM written all over it. However, they tend to lack the completeness of vision. They do not demonstrate an understanding of the market direction.
Leaders:
- Microsoft
- IBM
- Atlassian
- Rally Software
- CollabNet
These are the companies that you guys should look up to when it comes to ALM. They are giving the right solutions for the developers and are well equipped against their vision, and are well positioned for tomorrow.
Right now, with all the leaders, we see that Microsoft is at the top. According to blogs.msdn.com, the 2012 Magic Quadrant report is based on an evaluation of Visual Studio 2010. This of course made me excited because, there is a lot in Visual Studio 2012 that is in store for the developers. They really integrated ALM, specifically Agile/SCRUM in their developer tools. But then, other companies are not limited in doing so much – who knows, this list can be shuffled in a couple of years right?
I hope you guys find this information very helpful as you evaluate ALM solutions out there. Click here if you want to learn more about Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for ALM.
Till next time!
References:
[Gartner]
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