Changes in the build it yourself [DIY] advanced

analysis platform space, 2016And one prediction for 2017

The term DIY as it is used in this report describes solutions that a technical team from within a company would build from scratch, as opposed to packaged applications that a company could buy, or a ‘solution’ that a company would outsource to systems integrators, consultants, or the like. These three implementation options are detailed further at the end of the report.

Points of interest in the market space• Looking back into Gartner’s 2016 Advanced Analysis Magic

Quadrant [MQ] we see that Gartner declared that in order to make it onto this MQ in 2016 a vendor’s product offering must include a visual workflow environment. The visual workflow environment or composition framework [VCF] as Gartner labels it is a drag and drop style of GUI for process flow management. This front end workflow requirement is a change from previous years, when popular tools from companies including Salford Systems and Tibco were included on the MQ and evaluated strictly for their backend capabilities.

Points of interest in the market space• A second point of interest pertains to business models of the

companies in this market space. Gartner notes that there is not much variance in business models. While distinctions between the vendors may be slight, it is fair to say that there is in fact some degree of differentiation. KNIME maintains an open source business model; Rapidminer is semi-open source; and in its fog deployments Predixion is doing revenue sharing with channel partners. Other vendors in this space run basic freemium pricing structures.

In the following investigation of the advanced analysis market space different perspectives are applied over the top the MQ grid and the grid points are viewed in alternate ways. The additional overlays which are referred to in this report as the Linear Separation View and the 5 Band View reveal previously hidden patterns.

Figure 1: the Linear Separation View

With the linear separation view in figure 1 the intent is to manually split the scatterplot longwise down the middle, essentially marking the regression vector; and then mark the 2016 MQ positions to show movement of the vendors with respect to their positions in 2015. Empty circles represent vendor positions in 2015, and arrows point to the darkened circles which represent 2016 positions.

A pattern emerges below the linear separation line which indicates that the direction of change for almost all of those vendors is heading in a north-east direction, which is considered positive. In contrast, the majority of vendors above the separation line are changing in more southern or western directions which are considered negative.

Initial Observation

The linear separation view seems to be indicating that in general, the innovative / progressive technologies are experiencing growth, while the legacy technologies are experiencing turbulent times.

Figure 2: the 5 Band View

With the 5 band view the intent is to split the scatterplot vector crosswise or laterally into its 20, 40, 60, and 80th percentiles. In BARC terms these resulting bands are labeled Entrants, Specialists, Challengers, Trendsetters, and Market Leaders, respectively. In this view it might make sense to think of layout of the cross cuts as a playing field with “yard” line markers, where the 20-yard line is in the lower left quadrant and the 80-yard line is in the upper right hand quadrant.

The Entrants Band, below the 20th

percentile

Accenture Gartner listed Accenture as an outsourced service in 2015, not as a build it yourself platform, thus Accenture was not on the 2015 MQ. The services / consultant business model has worked extremely well for Accenture, and they reportedly bring in over $30 billion in revenues. Accenture’s acquisition of i4C is a significant indication of money flowing into the advanced analysis market space.

Accenture The 2014 acquisition of i4C has now transformed Accenture in Gartner’s eyes enough for it to be labeled a build solution and appear on the MQ. Like most new MQ entrants, Accenture lands in the section BARC would refer to as the Entrant section of the grid.

Accenture invested in and partners with Predixion; and also deploys Alteryx. In early 2016 observers might have asked whether there would be some pending competition between Accenture and those partners, as Accenture will likely continue to expand its range of use cases over i4C and begin to perform the same functions that it previously handed off to partners. That question has been laid to rest for Predixion though, as Predixion was recently acquired by Greenwave. The question for Alteryx is whether they experience pressures in the banking and retail industries, where there is now overlap with Accenture.

Figure 3: Comparison of Verticals

MegaputerBack on the MQ this year after not qualifying in 2015 due to insufficient references, Megaputer is a valid text analysis solution with deep and broad functionality including automatic ontology building. Combining linguistic techniques, neural and semantic analysis, and statistical analysis, Megaputer comes packaged with aviation thesauri, MeSH, SnoMed and Wordnet standard ontologies. Hurwitz has ranked Megaputer handsomely on their statistical and overall technical capability, and business value, shown in figure 4:

Figure 4: Hurwitz Advanced Analytics Index

Prognoz Prognoz lacks some of the emerging capabilities desired by users such as support for text and other data types [log and sensor, location, etc.]. Losing ground on the MQ axis that rates ability, Prognoz would appear to be heading so far south as to be in jeopardy of falling off the MQ. Prognoz has a visual environment for statistical modeling but it is considered rather technical and not an option for business users. The free version of the product does not support object positioning.

The Specialists Band, between the 20th and

40th percentiles

An interesting pattern can be seen in the Specialists band: about halfway into the band we see an area where vendors reach escape velocity. Revolution and Predixion were side by side in this location in 2015 and both of those vendors have since been acquired. Angoss, who was only slightly above Predixion, was not acquired but escaped into the challenger band.

Lavastorm Actually the biggest mover on the whole MQ, Lavastorm makes an impressive debut on the MQ by landing past the 30 yard line, well into the middle of the Specialists band. Not just another vendor out of Boston, Lavastorm’s LAE product combines automated data integration,which includes cataloging, and visualization.

Lavastorm Lavastorm is also included on Forrester’s Data Preparation landscape as one of the few vendors implementing a dataflow approach to data wrangling. Forrester considers the dataflow approach to be more innovative than the spreadsheet or embedded approaches. A data wrangling approach comparison table is shown in figure 9.

FICORumor has it that the FICO roadmap is heading toward a convergence of banking, insurance, retail, and healthcare vertical applications, into an umbrella or general purpose decision management platform. In the meantime, FICO lost seven tenths of a grid position on both the ability and vision axis of the MQ, dropping back close to the border of the Specialists band.

FICOFICO’s acquisition of Karmasphere’s assets in 2014 is another indication of money moving into the advanced analysis space. FICO counts Dell as a client, at the same time sitting right next to them as a competitor on Forrester’s Predictive Analytics [PA] Wave, shown in figure 5.

Figure 5: Forrester Predictive Analytics Wave

The Challenger Band, between the 40th and

60th percentilesNote that most vendors in this band are also

recognized by Forrester and Hurwitz.

Alpine Data Labs

Slightly behind the pack on the PA Wave, Alpine is a smaller, scrappy vendor that continues to work on gaining mind share and visibility in the US market. Like FICO, Alpine lost seven tenths of a position in both ability and vision on the MQ, almost dropping from a Challenger to a Specialist on the 5 band view.

Alteryx

Using a baseball analogy we could probably call Alteryx a five tool player. One of those important tools is the dataflow approach to data preparation. The following short slide deck comparison of Alteryx in the BI space extrapolates other aspects of the range of capabilities in their product line: http://www.slideshare.net/RussellReinsch/alteryxvsbirst

Angoss Although Angoss lacks some of the emerging capabilities in this market for advanced users such as a broader choice of algorithms, cloud deployment, collaboration and edge deployment; they have managed to hold a steady, close-to-center position across all analyst’s scatterplots over multiple years of operations. Angoss KnowledgeCORE’s comprehensive support for PMML formatting has to be one of the factors contributing to their consistency and persistence in the advanced analysis market space. KnowledgeCORE ranks sixth for customer satisfaction on G2’s PA solution list.

Figure 6: G2 predictive analytics satisfaction ratings

Dell Dell is also included on the Hurwitz Index and the PA Wave, labeled as StatSoft on the Index. For clarity, StatSoft was a software firm out of Oklahoma, Statisitica was that firm’s flagship product, and Dell acquired Statsoft’s assets in 2014. Dell has finally completed integration of Kitenga into Statistica, more than three years after acquiring Kitenga. With the 2nd biggest position change on the MQ, Dell gained vision but somehow lost ground in the ability to execute.

Dell Dell shows strength in customer support, responsiveness, and consultant’s product knowledge on Statistica; however integration with third party systems, and online training and forums are weak areas for Dell overall. The acquisitions of Statsoft and Kitenga are more examples of money flowing into the advanced analysis space.

Predixion SoftwarePredixion provides wizards in a self-service interface that allow less technical business users to perform modeling tasks. While these self-service interfaces limit the overall strength of the products’ analysis capability, many customers find that having some analysis capability is better than having none at all. The most notable weakness in the Predixion solution might be that it has limited data preparation capability.

Predixion SoftwarePredixion made substantial headway into IoT and fog analytics, forging partnerships with Cisco and GE, which made the platform a very attractive acquisition target for Greenwave Systems, who bought them in 2016. The Greenwave acquisition is another example of money flowing into this space; and note that Predixion was in the same position as Revolution on the MQ when Revolution was acquired by Microsoft last year. Average cloud-based analysis contract prices are running $350,000.

SAPLike Angoss, SAP is consistently positioned in the middle of the pack on several advanced analysis reports. SAP has been the predictive analysis market share leader for quite some time and the platform’s impressive capabilities qualify them for inclusion on other high profile reports that Angoss and others platforms do not qualify for. Forrester’s Enterprise Insight Platform Suites Wave highlights SAP’s strength in data management and channel partnerships in figure 7.

Figure 7:

Forrester’s Enterprise Insight Platforms Wave

The Trendsetter Band, above the 60th percentile

KNIMEThis is a power user product line but lacks high level interactive visualizations; customers are required to use another tool such as Qlik, Spotfire or Tableau to perform these presentations. KNIME gets punished for this on the Wave but ultimately it does not seem to be a problem for Knime’s growing popularity as an Open Source statistical analysis platform, as shown in figure 8. Although quite powerful, this product is difficult to use; the company is not targeting casual users so it is not the best value for SMBs. There is no support for PMML.

Figure 8: changes in analysis software popularity

Rapidminer Like KNIME, Rapidminer has an open source component; though both Forrester and Hurwitz consider the Rapidminer product line stronger than KNIME. Functionally Rapidminer is probably most similar to SAS Enterprise Miner or IBM SPSS Modeler. From the self-service standpoint, Rapidminer gets high scores for "Wisdom of Crowds" guidance for recommending next steps during processing tasks.

Rapidminer Hurwitz notes Rapidminer’s statistical functionality and broad text mining capability but found the embedded preparation capabilities sub-par. Forrester’s Data Preparation report delineates the different approaches that some of the other products in this report take for data preparation and wrangling in figure 9. Nonetheless Rapidminer received Series C funding in 2016; yet another example of money flowing into this space.

Figure 9: Primary types of data preparation

IBMVendors the size of IBM obviously have multiple products with overlapping features. One thing to remember when thinking about IBM’s advanced analysis products, is to differentiate between Watson Analytics, Watson, and Watson Explorer. Watson Explorer is the flagship text analysis product; whereas Watson Analytics is in beta.

IBMAs an MQ “Leader,” Watson Analytics is apparently regressing slightly to the mean, slipping back on the vision axis but regardless of the loss of ground in 2016, Watson Analytics remains the only product that can handle both embedded or spreadsheet data wrangling approaches. IBM has been doing data preparation from day one and has been in the upper right corner of the Advanced Analysis MQ, Forrester’s PA Wave, and Hurwitz’s Advanced Analysis Index for several years.

SASLike IBM, SAS has also been providing data prep from day one, and like IBM, SAS is also regressing slightly to the mean on the 2016 MQ. Locked in a constant battle with IBM for the top spot on the MQ, the Index, the Wave, and just about every other analyst’s comparisons, SAS sets itself apart from all platforms by providing the most powerful set of interface options in the market.

Summary of findings from the 5 Band View• 1) The 5 Band View seems to be indicating that escape

velocity has a minimum threshold of passing the 30 yard line. • 2) Just below the BARC ‘average’ point, and near the 40 yard

line is an area where bigger fish are finding acquisition targets. • 3) Just above the BARC ‘average’ point, in the area from the

40 line to the 50 line is a stability plateau which might even be a precursor for vendors to IPO.

Prediction for 2017

The prediction is that Lavastorm moves close to the 37-38 yard line in 2017, and gets acquired in 2018.

Implementation / Deployment Concepts

There are three different approaches to implementing or deploying an advanced analysis system: building, buying, or outsourcing. • Building an advanced analysis system requires skilled users able to leverage horizontal

tools or platforms to create advanced applications from scratch. This approach is often taken by a company that is road mapping a wider range of use cases. • Buying an advanced analysis system involves the purchase of packaged applications

with embedded capabilities which can be delivered as on-demand or on-premise solution. This approach is often followed by companies considering a narrower range of use cases. • Outsourcing involves working with technical services providers such as Fractal,

Musigma, or Opera, that use Matlab, Python, R, Spark MLlib or proprietary solutions to deliver insights to clients delivered as reports.