Open source at Gartner: Point taken, I was too broad in my characterization. I read the reports on information management-related topics which for me was maybe a dozen or so areas of coverage, and heard or read a lot of “pay no attention to open source, it’s a fad” advice. I think the right answer was “pay attention, but don’t jump in just yet unless you have good reason”.

Second point on open source: OSS in the information management / BI space 18-24 months ago was still in the techno-geek ghetto and was just hitting the elbow in adoption, so it made sense not to cover. But pooh-poohing the topic is what I saw many analysts doing, e.g. I read a number of “kids in the basement coding” proclamations. 18-24 months ago was too early so your point is valid, but I have this sense that Gartner consistently downplays disruptors until the enthusiasts and early adopters are in, then suddenly Gartner is right there at the meaty part of the vendor curve saying “we called this all along.” With .8 probability no less

Regarding whether I’ve talked with vendors or customers: Yes, a lot of them. Donald’s comment about “the Informatica quadrant” was a pretty broad perception after the shift from the ETL MQ. This one requires an aside:

ETL is perceived as BI only. ETL vendors can only get good growth by expanding outside that niche market and eyeball the huge opportunities in the larger application market. DQ, DP, etc. get them partway there. Your shift in MQ helps them say “use our tools for other things and better manage your data.” The assumption is that completely centralized DI works for operational (as opposed to analytic) DI. Yes for migrations, consolidations, etc. But for broad-based low latency application DI, I am not convinced for a lot of reasons. Licensing, scalability, low latency, high concurrency, architectural match, skill match, etc. are real problems.

This makes a DI MQ hard to accept because the use cases between BI and OLTP have different characteristics and one-size-fits-all product model may not be right. I was harsh in saying this was a travesty, but I still believe the ability to inform is fairly low because of the generality.

Regarding customers / clients of the DI vendors and of Gartner, yes I talk to them all the time. Clients ask me to advise them on enterprise scale DI architecture and product selection. I have to sit in the trenches with the evaluators and users, and I get nailed if I do a face plant when it’s in production. I’ve seen some of the evaluation spreadsheets given to Gartner clients and I stand by the utility criticism. We can talk about those another time as this isn’t the right forum.

You said “The MQ is not the tool to make that decision for you.” My criticism is that clients often use the MQ as a crutch for thinking. While you personally can’t be held to account for misuse of the MQ, there is an undercurrent in Gartner’s messaging that this is exactly what the MQ is for.

You’re being disingenuous when you say there’s no profit in the MQ. Then why do it? This is the vehicle that creates a market perception others noted: “if you aren’t there you aren’t anywhere”. Of course no vendors opt out of participation even though the MQ process is an expensive undertaking and may not match their marketing position. If they don’t they run the risk of bad press through mischaracterization which is a pretty big pressure. It would be fairer to not include them if they didn’t answer, or to stop relying on them for answers and do completely independent product research.

Many vendors see the MQ as the gateway to respectability in large corporate IT shops and I would argue that Gartner plays this up, despite the pragmatism of individual analysts like yourself. My view of the MQ is that it’s vendor research, not product research, but that’s not how clients perceive it.

I have to apologize for steering the discussion into generic MQ-land. That topic and the DI MQ criticism are related but it puts you in a no-win argument defending Gartner policies vs. one quadrant.

On your last point, my statement on breadth was poorly worded.

The DI MQ is in a tough transition period where vendors are shifting from batch movement tools to suites and someday maybe to platforms, The challenge I see is that the MQ rates vendors and not products. Why not state which of a company like Oracle’s or IBM’s products are in scope with the DI MQ? That removes an element of criticism.

I do DI evaluations by looking look at the entire DI suite offerings and the subdomains like DQ, ETL, federation. If the need is a point solution, the point vendors in that domain can be included in the eval. If the need is for components outside their scope then suites are more appropriate and point tools can be excluded, or included for clients with a “best of breed” model.

My experience with some components of suites in the leader quadrant is that they are bad or poorly integrated in the suite. Point vendors can’t easily meet the entry requirements yet have better products for that component.

All the single-technology vendors have their place, so why not provide an MQ that evaluates suites and suite integration, and then separately the core technologies? That would best serve client needs when emphasis is on a subset of the components. My experience is that this is almost always the case.