SAP Recognized as a Leader in 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Integration Tools

Above is the head line from SAP news. Personally, I rather makes me sad because of what could have been and still could. My argumentation goes into three directions

1. SAP was once the top 3 products in the Gartner Quadrant.
2. SAP's completeness of vision is steadily declining.
3. Some peculiarities of the Gartner Magic Quadrant.

In 2007, SAP acquired Business Objects and with that what is today called SAP Data Services and SAP Information Steward. That gave a boost to both, Business Object and SAP, into the leader's quadrant.

We have tried to be visionary with the product(s) - the x-axis - but the ability to execute was always hindered by the inability of SAP sales to go after the non-SAP customers. (Do you know any non-SAP customer using a SAP data integration tool?)

In 2024 the picture is what is to be expected from a large and mature market. All contenders moved towards the top-right corner, getting better in completeness and ability. And new players enter the market as well. Everybody except SAP.

As a product person, the feature completeness is the dimension I care most, with the naive opinion that a good product sells itself.

The trend in this regards shows the first misery of SAP. All vendors are getting better over time, overtaking SAP. SAP is the only steadily declining (apart from Talend/Qlik in the year 2024 - no idea why). This also reflects the customer sentiments I keep finding via various channels.

Another thing it shows is that I left SAP in the year 2019 - all went south without my influence. Just kidding.

What I like about the Gartner Magic Quadrants is that it also incorporates customer feedback. That makes it particularly well balanced. But as a vendor you can stack the odds a bit. They ask specific questions like "Can you connect to a MySQL database?"; "Do you support CDC?"; "Do you support transformations?". What they cannot check in detail are the combinations, especially when multiple tools are offered, like in the case of SAP.

Asking a sales person today, how to get SAP ERP data into e.g. a Snowflake Data Warehouse, they try to sell SAP DataSphere. Does it have any of the SAP Data Services features, connectivity to pretty much all source and target system, basic transformations and advanced ones, extreme speed,... But it should, to deserve a completeness score of 60%. The majority of the score is based on old products, although they are no longer promoted.

If somebody argues, that is because SAP's strategy is cloud only and the Magic Quadrant for Integration Platforms as a Service is the right one to look at, it is the same there, just a much faster decline.

What hurts an architect like me most, are all the opportunities not taken and that the current product direction is bound to fail as well - can be seen clearly by anybody with a modicum of understanding about the technology and the market.