It's October, so it must be time for IdM-based Magic Quadrants to appear. Everyone looks to the report as a guide to winners and losers -- most especially the vendors whose products are in the category being discussed.
It's October, so it must be time for IdM-based Magic Quadrants to appear. According to its publisher, the Gartner Group:
"The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the 'Leaders' quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose."
That disclaimer aside, everyone looks to the report as a guide to winners and losers -- most especially the vendors whose products are in the category being discussed.
Today we'll take a look at the MQ for user provisioning.
It seems a no-brainer to report that Oracle is far and away the "winner". Or, as Gartner notes, "Oracle clearly stands out in both vision and execution within the Leaders quadrant."
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Joining Oracle in the Leaders quadrant are IBM, CA, Novell and Courion. Sun used to be there, but it would appear that Sun's acquisition by Oracle posted Larry Ellison's company well ahead of the pack.
Moving up (but still in the "Challengers" quadrant) was Microsoft. As Gartner wrote:
"Microsoft made the most progress within the Challengers quadrant due to the release of the long-awaited Forefront Identity Manager product, which improves the usability of its provisioning solution, adds deep integration into many important Microsoft components, and much improves the experience for both administrators and end users."
Microsoft's recent acquisition of Sentillion -- which is in the "Visionaries" quadrant -- could presage a move into the Leaders quadrant next year.
Most of the Leaders quadrant vendors will have copies of the report available on their Web sites (or you can access it here) and it does make interesting reading. Not so much for the graph itself, but for the discussion of each vendor and its products by Gartner analysts Earl Perkins and Perry Carpenter.