Microsoft is placed furthest in vision and highest for ability to execute within the Leaders Quadrant.

With the release of SQL Server 2014, the cornerstone of Microsoft’s data platform, we have continued to add more value to what customers are already buying.  Innovations like workload optimized in-memory technology, advanced security, high availability for mission critical workloads are built-in instead of requiring expensive add-ons. We have long maintained that customers need choice and flexibility to navigate this mobile-first, cloud-first world and that Microsoft is uniquely equipped to deliver on that vision in both trusted environments on-premises and in the cloud.

Industry analysts have taken note of our efforts and we are excited to share Gartner has positioned Microsoft as a Leader, for the third year in a row, in the Magic Quadrant for Operational Database Management Systems. Microsoft is placed furthest in vision and highest for ability to execute within the Leaders Quadrant.

Given customers are trying to do more with data than ever before across a variety of data types, at large volumes, the complexity of managing and gaining meaningful insights from the data continues to grow.  One of the key design points in Microsoft data strategy is ensuring ease of use in addition to solving complex customer problems. For example, you can now manage both structured and unstructured data through the simplicity of T-SQL rather than requiring a mastery in Hadoop and MapReduce technologies. This is just one of many examples of how Microsoft values ease of use as a design point. 

Gartner also recognizes Microsoft as a leader in the Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms and placed Microsoft as a leader in the Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management Systems – recognizing Microsoft’s completeness of vision and ability to execute in the data warehouse market.

Offering only one piece of the data puzzle isn’t enough to satisfy all the different scenarios in today’s environments and workloads. Our commitment is to make it easy for customers to capture and manage data and to transform and analyze that data for new insights.

Being named a leader in Operational DBMS, BI & Analytics Platforms, and DW DBMS Magic Quadrants is incredibly important to us: We believe it validates Microsoft is delivering a comprehensive platform that ensures every organization, every team and every individual is empowered to do more and achieve more because of the data at their fingertips.