From sausage to splat- Gartner's ECM 2008 MQ update

Last time I wrote about the Gartner ECM MQ I commented that the 2007 MQ view resembled that of a sausage with the way the vendors were spread from the bottom left to the top right. Well now that the September 2008 release has been put out I have to say it now looks like a splat !

So what has changed in significance?

The top right quadrant (Leaders Quadrant)

• Microsoft has arrived in the leaders quadrant, any surprises here!
• IBM and EMC and OpenText are curling back to the left so is there a stall here, or more like a market realignment?
• Oracle has risen up in the leaders quadrant, seeming to make good head way after the Stellent re brand.

In the top left (Challenger Quadrant)

• Hyland once nearly smack, bang in the middle has drifted to the left but remains in the challengers quadrant.

In the bottom right (Visionary Quadrant)

• Interwoven seems stable and near to breaking the top right line
• Vignette has drifted back to the left and is close to entering the niche quadrant

In the bottom left (Niche players)

• Alfresco has entered the quadrant, welcome and well done for Open Source
• Other players seem to be grouping together for a conference of some sort
• Tower Software has become HP
• Objective has drifted further to the left

Overall the sausage has become a vendor splat onto the MQ quadrant and next round is going to be interesting as to where some of the players move too looking at the current moves.

Quadrants, consolidation and sausages !

As a point of interest I dug out ye Old Magic Quadrants (here after referred to as"the map") from Gartner covering the ECM vendor landscape over the period 2004 - 2007. Why? well with the recent pre-agreement from HP I was interested to see what I thought the vendor landscape was going to look like and to review what had already come before.

It was an interesting exercise and the following observations are simple snapshots of stacking the quadrants next to each other, far from scientific I know, but makes for some good, quick observations.

2004 There were 22 vendors on the map. Some of these looking back we would arguably question today, such as RedDot? Maybe this was a time where the Web Content Management (WCM) area was still moving along and there was some confusion as to where it stood in the the whole ECM space. Well that quickly got sorted in the 2005 map.

2005 the map is down 4 players to 18 and quickly taking on the shape of a sausage with the spread of vendors from the lower left to the top right. Meridio drops out as well as RedDot due to the lack of spread of functions that are being delivered to classify as a full ECM player. Objective enters into the lower right, obviously they had cash to spare this year; The big change of course was the acquisition of Hummingbird by OpenText. The top right were certainly looking to acquire, or get big enough to stop being acquired by some one else.

2006 held the total number of players as 18, however consolidation was very evident in that IBM went for the big bite on FileNet and the top right has dropped from 8 to 4 players. Looking at the map in the top right IBM and EMC were going neck and neck in the race for the anointed leaders position.

2007 sees the total number of vendors reduced to 17. Stellent has acquired by Oracle; IBM move to the leader position, slightly above and ahead of EMC. Interesting to note that Microsoft have steadily moved to the right and are firmly placed in the visionary quadrant. The sausage is starting also to look a little stretched in the middle as the gap widens between the top and bottom players. Hyland Software have for the last 4 years been steadily moved toward the very centre of the map, not a bad position to be in for expanding out of the US only market.

2008 the prediction is that the number will stay at 17, as HP will enter and Tower Software will be no more. But the big question will be where will HP appear on the Map? Will they be in the compete area of the top right. Guess there are some fast and furious analyst lunches, oops I meant briefings, happening right now !