ML and BI Are Coming Together, Gartner Says

The convergence of machine learning and business intelligence is upon us, as BI tool makers increasingly are exposing ML capabilities to users, and users are performing ML activities in their BI tools. That’s according to the latest Gartner report on analytics and BI tools, which was released this week.

In its February 11 Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence (ABI) Platforms, the storied Stamford, Connecticut analyst firm did its best to quantify and qualify the trends in the sector. While BI and ML have largely existed on parallel tracks, with BI seeking to report what happened and ML seeking to predict what will happen, Gartner sees the two disciplines converging, at least as far as the toolsets are concerned.

Not all ML work will occur within BI tools, of course. But according to Garter, 40% of ML model development and scoring “will be done in products that do not have [ML] as their primary goal” by 2022, the analyst group says. That’s a considerable number, and if it comes true, it will have ramifications on how the larger market of data and analytics tools develops.

The market for ABI tools (Gartner’s term) finds itself at a cross-roads, with significant turmoil as a result of several events, including consolidation of the market, the rise of cloud platforms, and the continued emergence of ML.

To differentiate themselves in a crowded market where visualization is now a commodity, ABI vendors are adopting additional capabilities, including the aforementioned ML model development and scoring functions. But the ML focus doesn’t stop there, and Gartner sees the vendors using ML and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to enhance the entire user experience, including improving the way that users prepare data, find insights, and explain their findings to others.

Gartner says that 2019 “was a year of transition toward cloud ecosystem dominance.” Google’s acquisition of Looker and Salesforce’s acquisition of Tableau make sense when you consider that Microsoft has dominated the ABI field with its PowerBI offering, which it offered at a relatively low cost compared to other ABI offerings.

The overall ABI market has continued to grow despite the pricing pressure exerted by Microsoft and other vendors, thanks to continued strong demand for analytics capabilities. According to Gartner, the ABI field posted a 22.3% increase in revenues in 2018, down from 35.0% the prior year (it didn’t supply a 2019 figure).

Here’s how the ABI field shook out in 2019, courtesy of the analysts at Gartner:

The leaders quadrant has not changed in 2020, and Microsoft, courtesy of the power of PowerBI, continues to hold its spot farthest to the right and closest to the top. Gartner lauds Microsoft for a “comprehensive and visionary” product roadmap and a robust marketing reach. In terms of the product itself, PowerBI is no longer trailing competitors (as it has before), but leads most ABI offerings, thanks in large part for its automated ML and augmented analytics capabilities. Support for data prep, discovery, and interactive dashboards all check necessary boxes for a leader. However, the on-prem and cloud versions do not have feature parity, and data connections, particularly to SAP, are problematic.

Tableau is Microsoft’s closest competitor in the Magic Quadrant, and it has a good record to run on, particularly when it comes to interactive data exploration and visualization. But Tableau, which is now owned by Salesforce, bolstered its case in 2019 by augmenting its BI with AI, such as through a natural language interface for asking questions. Data prep and support for server environments were also improved. While Tableau made inroads in augmented analytics and data governance, these are caution areas in Gartner’s book.

Qlik maintains its spot in the leader’s quadrant thanks to its strong product vision.