Gartner Names Winners of Data Science and Machine-Learning Platforms 2018 Customer Choice Awards

Analyst house Gartner, Inc. has officially announced the winners of its 2018 Peer Insights Customer Choice Awards for Data Science and Machine-Learning Platforms. According to Gartner, the Customer Choice Awards are a ranking of vendors by “verified end-user professionals” on the company’s Peer Insights website, a peer review site in the mold of G2Crowd, Capterra, and TrustRadius. Recognition is given to a maximum of seven vendors in the marketplace. The awards take into account both the number of end-user reviews, and the overall user ratings.

Awards are given based on several criteria. The vendor must have at least 50 published reviews in the market guide during the submission period and must pass Gartner’s validation, conflict of interest and moderation process. Additionally, any solution provider must have a at least one tool designated by Gartner’s analysts as relevant in the space. In markets where more than seven vendors meet the thresholds, those with the highest number of approved ratings are named winners.

Peer Insights Customer Choice Awards are designed to “help IT professionals make better purchase decisions by leveraging the knowledge and feedback by fellow verified end users” according to Gartner’s executive VP of Products and Services Ken Davis. He adds: “We work hard to ensure that all of the reviews are submitted by an IT professional or business user who has had experience purchasing, implementing and/or using the enterprise solution they are reviewing — free from conflicts of interest.”

Alteryx and RapidMiner are this year’s top scorers

When accounting for the number of verified reviews and rating, Alteryx and RapidMiner paced the other providers with scores of 4.5 and 4.6 stars respectively. Alteryx users scored the product well for data access and manipulation (4.7 stars) and ease of use regarding the user interface (4.5 stars). RapidMiner’s product capabilities scores were just as impressive, with marks of 4.6 stars or better for the same data access and manipulation, as well as predictive analytics, forecasting, and overall user experience.

The most popular data science platform didn’t win an award

SAS garnered 264 user reviews, which is 80 more than any of the other providers Gartner included in its Peer Insights. With an overall rating of 4.2 stars, the company’s main blemish from users seems to be pricing and contract flexibility. There’s also sentiment that SAS is one of the more “legacy” tools in the market, however young it is.

Is H2O.ai on the cusp of legitimate market leadership?

It’s one thing for Gartner to name a company to the leader column of its Magic Quadrant, and it’s another to have it backed by real user sentiment. H2O.ai received the top overall rating of any provider with at least 30 ratings (4.7 stars), but fell just short of the award threshold with 42 verified reviews. H2O.ai offers an open source machine learning product that allows users to build ‘smart’ applications. The solution enables data scientists and developers to import algorithms into existing applications as well. An impressive showing for the startup founded in 2011.

We encourage you to read Gartner’s complete listing of Peer Insights vendor and product reviews.