The Wait is Over: Gartner’s 2016 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management Has Arrived!

It’s been an interesting year in the world of content management. The long awaited Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management (ECM) was released in late October, and provides a rundown of the top ECM vendors, and how their products compare head-to-head within the quadrant. The report which places vendors in one of four quadrants including Leaders, Visionaries, Challengers and the Niche Player.  Enterprise content management is gaining momentum as a data solution that can help enterprises take control of their content. This category is subject to a rapidly changing landscape, and Gartner recognizes the shifts in this market that will affect clients strongly. To be included in the report, there are six specific criteria vendors must meet. Gartner explains:

“To appear in this Magic Quadrant, vendors had to meet Gartner’s criteria for revenue, geographic presence, essential functional components, analytics/BI, packaged apps, integration and extensions, and proof of use in production scenarios.”

Regarding revenue, the vendor must have at least $15 million USD in total revenue in 2015 derived from ECM software, with at least 5% ($750,000) of that revenue derived from cloud-based content management services, an indicator of how important cloud computing has become to ECM product capabilities.Total ECM software revenue is comprised of, license revenue, cloud service revenue, subscription revenue and technical support and maintenance revenue.

[Compare the Top 24 Enterprise Content Management Providers with the 2016 Content Management Buyer’s Guide. Download Here.]

Changes

The number of vendors included has dropped from 20 in 2015 to 15, primarily due to changes to the inclusion criteria. Gartner made these changes to reflect the dynamics of a mature market that is adapting to a range of internal and external drivers. The following vendors have been dropped since last your’s MQ:

• Fabasoft, Upland Software and Siav. Gartner explains that these vendors did not meet Gartner’s new criteria requiring at least 10% of a vendor’s revenue in this market to come from outside its main region, and delivery of packaged applications to three or more vertical markets.
• Software Innovation, due to merger and acquisition with Tieto the vendor did not partake in the MQ evaluation, and Systemware who was ineligible for inclusion.

Niche Players

In 2016, Vendor, Laserfiche hover slightly over the line of Niche and Challengers quadrant, leaving only a slight push in ability to execute to make the challenger’s cut. Gartner explains it’s on-the-fence stance:

“Despite improvements, the technical support offered by smaller Laserfiche resellers is not always to the satisfaction of their clients. Customers should look for Laserfiche Gold resellers and Laserfiche certified partners with demonstrable product knowledge.”

Niche players are plentiful in this year’s quadrant described as, “Niche Players typically focus on specific categories of ECM technology (such as transactional content management technology), midmarket buyers, or supplements to the offerings of business application or “stack” providers.”

Visionaries

Gartner’s guide describes Visionaries: “Visionaries typically show a strong understanding of the market and anticipate shifting market forces. They may lead efforts relating to standards, new technologies or alternative delivery models, but they have less Ability to Execute than Leaders.”

Visionaries are typically smaller companies but have a very good awareness of how the market will evolve. Gartner uses “market understanding” as one of the evaluation criteria in positioning a ECM vendor’s completeness of vision, along with offering product strategy, and innovation. Vendor, M-Files which is based in Tampere, Finland is noted for M-Files’ native mobile app which lets users access documents offline, and was complimented for its support features like the ability to scan directly from tablet or mobile phone, inclusion of electronic signatures, and its reviewing and approving capabilities. M-Files is the only vendor in this year’s Visionary MQ.

Challengers

Challengers are characterized as not possessing all of the essential functional components of ECM software as the Leaders do, and also for the tendency to leverage third party partnerships to fill out their offerings. This year’s MQ features four vendors, one of which is making it’s mark on the market in recent years with a growing collection of ECM offerings. Alfresco’s open-source-based platform is described by Gartner as a great solution for technology buyers who want to customize and optimize their ECM implementations in a variety of deployments and cloud implementations.

Leaders

And finally, to this year’s leaders, defined as ECM software providers that, “Are perceived in the industry as thought leaders, and have well-articulated plans for enhancing recovery capabilities, improving ease of deployment and administration, and increasing their scalability and product breadth.” Wouldn’t you know, the leader quadrant is saturated with vendors that fit the bill, including IBM, OpenText and more.

For the full report, grab your copy of the new 2016 ECM MQ HERE, and for more Content Management vendor information, including profiles, and product feature reviews, download our completely free 2016 Enterprise Content Management Vendor Buyer’s Guide.

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