Gartner releases Magic Quadrant for CPM Suites, 2006

The Leaders:
Hyperion Solutions
Cognos

The Challengers:
SAP
Oracle PeopleSoft EPM
Infor Global Solutions

The Niche Players:
Lawson Software
Clarity Sytems
Board International
CorVu

The Visionaries:
Cartesis
OutlookSoft
SAS Institute
Oracle CPM
Business Objects
Applix
Longview Solutions

Leaders

Leaders' performances excel in the CPM suite market segment. They're able to deliver breadth and depth of CPM suite functionality, as well as provide enterprisewide implementations to support a broad CPM strategy. Leaders successfully articulate a business proposition that resonates with buyers, supported by the viability and operational capability to deliver on a global basis.

Challengers

Challengers provide offerings that are complementary to their established business applications. In doing so, they expect to leverage their installed client bases. They typically offer good breadth of functionality, but their solutions are primarily tied to their own applications. Challengers may also have a limited vision of CPM that isn't well-aligned with Gartner's vision of where CPM is heading.

Visionaries

Visionaries have a strong vision for delivering a CPM suite. They are distinguished by the openness and flexibility of their application architectures, and they offer depth of functionality in the areas they address, but they may have gaps relative to broader functionality requirements. A visionary vendor is a market "thought leader" and innovator; however, it may have yet to achieve sufficient scale, or there may be concerns about its capability to grow and provide consistent execution.

Niche Players

Niche vendors do well in a specific segment of the CPM suite market, or have limited capability to innovate or outperform other vendors in the market. They may be focused on a specific domain or aspect of CPM, and are likely to lack depth of functionality, or they may have gaps relative to broader CPM suite functionality requirements. Niche vendors may have reasonably broad CPM suites, but limited implementation and support capabilities and relatively limited customer bases, or they may not have achieved the necessary scale to solidify their market positions. Some have limited geographic presence outside their "home" regions.

Garnter's review about The Leaders:

Hyperion Solutions

Hyperion has maintained its high brand recognition among CFOs and finance professionals, which means that it is present in virtually every CPM suite evaluation. Hyperion strengthened its offering with release 9.0 of its applications. This leveraged the new Hyperion System 9 BI platform as a more consistent underlying foundation for its main CPM applications, Hyperion Planning and Hyperion Financial Management. The System 9 BI platform includes enhanced Web analysis and financial reporting capabilities and also provides common user management capabilities. Hyperion recently introduced new capital asset-planning capabilities and launched BPM Architect, which enables users to create custom CPM applications and process flows. Hyperion continues to show strong overall vision and market presence, although it upset its users by charging an upgrade fee for release 9.0. This created disquiet, but despite this, and the fact that Hyperion generally is the highest-cost option in most evaluations, it continues to maintain a leadership position. However, Hyperion faces growing competition from other vendors, and users should be aware of this during negotiations.

Cognos

Cognos has been realigning its sales and marketing focus around a more comprehensive performance management message, of which CPM is an important part. It feels this will help it win more strategic business in large enterprises against Hyperion and SAP. Although this makes sense, it has resulted in patchy execution in the CPM suites space during the past year, especially in the EMEA and APAC regions. However, once Cognos rolls this model out globally it will be well-positioned to leverage the growing focus among larger enterprises on a broader approach to performance management. At a tactical level, Cognos is now widely recognized as a leading CPM suites vendor and continues to do well in planning-led deals. It is also appearing in more midmarket opportunities, where the combination of CPM functionality and underlying BI platform is appealing to CIOs. Cognos has focused on augmenting its solutions through performance "blueprints" (developed by its Innovation Center) that provide pre-defined models for functional and vertical CPM and performance management processes. The blueprints are downloadable by customers, which enables Cognos to deliver value-add functionality without requiring users to upgrade their underlying systems. Overall, Cognos remains a leader in the CPM space and is well-placed to capitalize on the blurring of the BI and CPM market boundaries.

Gartner's comments on Microsoft CPM

One notable market event was Microsoft's announcement of its intent to release PerformancePoint Server in 2007 (see "Microsoft to Expand Its Business Intelligence Product Line: Announcing Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007"). Considering Excel remains the most-widely used CPM application, this represents a significant move and can have a major impact on the market. It may also create challenges for vendors that have developed their CPM suites using Microsoft technology, because they will need to increase their differentiation from Microsoft's own products. However, Microsoft faces execution challenges before it can deliver on the promise of PerformancePoint Server.

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