Gartner Positions Birst as a "Challenger" in Magic Quadrant Report for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Feb 26, 2015) - Birst, the global leader in Cloud BI and Analytics, today announced that Gartner, Inc. positioned the company as a 'Challenger' in the 2015 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms* report. For this Magic Quadrant, Gartner defines BI and analytics as a software platform that delivers 13 critical capabilities across three categories -- enable, produce and consume -- in support of four use cases for BI and analytics.* The report evaluated 24 different software vendors and placed Birst in the Challengers Quadrant based on its completeness of vision and ability to execute. The full report is available at no charge from the Birst website here.

According to Gartner, "It is very likely that 2015 will be a critical year in which democratizing access to analytics will continue to dominate market requirements and stress the need for governance. Next generation data discovery capabilities that leverage advanced analytics under the covers to simplify business user data preparation and automate pattern exploration are likely to be more important enablers."*

"Birst defined the pioneering vision of what a cloud BI and analytics set of capabilities should look like. Customers are recognizing Birst for these capabilities and for our ability to execute. As more organizations plan to democratize analytics and leverage data assets to win in today's marketplace, Birst's 2-tier data architecture provides a powerful solution that delivers user-ready data to everyday business users across an organization," said Jay Larson, CEO, Birst.

Birst enables companies to make more intelligent business decisions by unifying, refining and embedding data into every decision across an organization. With its unique 2-tier analytics technology, customers can combine centrally managed enterprise data with decentralized user-generated data to deliver a unified view of the entire organization. Birst has strengthened its industry leadership and unveiled multiple products, services and initiatives including:

• Marketing Analytics Accelerator: Birst introduced another vertically specific BI application, giving marketers unmatched ability to build customer awareness, acquisition and allegiance with data-driven insights. Birst provides a user-ready data tier that unifies all marketing data and allows marketers to define how they measure business results.
• Birst Visualizer: With Google-like search and Amazon-like recommendations, Birst Visualizer offers business users a fast and easy way to create powerful visualizations. Birst Visualizer is now generally available to all customers, making it easy for business users to create, consume, and share data through visually compelling charts and graphs.
• Technology Partnerships: Birst unveiled a new partnership with SAP HANA, enabling data-driven organizations to bring together SAP's next-generation cloud platform and Birst's comprehensive 2-tier data architecture to provide instant access to an organization's data and help eliminate BI wait time. Birst also announced the availability of Birst Express for NetSuite, a free analytics module that NetSuite administrators can use to achieve greater operational efficiencies.
• Increased Global Footprint: Birst's new Singapore-based data center extends the company's growing global footprint by providing proximity, security and high performance to organizations with a presence in the region. Now with data centers in Asia, Europe and North America, Birst customers have the ability to choose where their data resides.
  
  

*Gartner "Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms" by Rita L. Sallam, Bill Hostmann, Kurt Schlegel, Joao Tapadinhas, Josh Parenteau, Thomas W. Oestreich, February 23, 2015.

About Magic Quadrant
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About Birst
Birst is the global leader in Cloud BI and Analytics. The company helps organizations make thousands of decisions better, every day, for every person. Birst's patented 2-tier data architecture and comprehensive BI platform sits on top of all of your data, to unify, refine and embed data consistently into every individual decision -- up and down the org chart. Thousands of the most demanding businesses trust Birst Cloud BI to make metric-driven business execution a reality. Learn more at www.birst.com and join the conversation @birstbi.