Gartner Selects Microsoft for ‘Magic Quadrants’

Gartner Research has named Microsoft (MSFT) a leader in four of its prestigious “Magic Quadrants.”

They are the quadrants for Application Infrastructure for Back-End Application Integration Projects; Application Infrastructure for SOA Composite Application Projects; New Systematic Service-Oriented Business Application Projects; and Data Warehouse Database Management Systems.

"We believe that these reports validate the depth of our offering in these spaces. In our opinion, Microsoft's position in these Magic Quadrants shows that we are delivering a leading-edge platform for service orientation and integration. We think the results and customer adoption speak for themselves," said Steven Martin, senior director of Developer Platform Product Management at Microsoft. "Customers are leveraging the strong technical performance and low cost of ownership of the Microsoft Application Platform, and are seeing immediate business results. Factor in the flexibility and choice we are now offering with our software-plus-services strategy, and we are providing a truly differentiated set of solutions."

This week's Microsoft SOA & Business Process Conference will showcase customers that are seeing notable results today using real-world service-oriented architecture (SOA), leveraging the Microsoft Application Platform for mission-critical areas of the business. The Microsoft SOA & Business Process Conference helps customers achieve real-world SOA by providing thoughtful approaches to customers and partners in all stages of service-oriented development, according to the company.

So just how are companies selected for Gartner’s Magic Quadrants? For example, according to the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Application Infrastructure for Back-End Integration Projects, "Leaders are vendors with a proven and comprehensive integrated product set, as well as a sizeable installed base of reasonably satisfied clients that extends internationally. They have an ample installed base of products to cross-sell their integration solutions to, and have demonstrated their ability to anticipate technology and market trends over the years by extending their offerings with composite, application-enabling technology. Leaders manifest their understanding of the problem space by providing innovative features, and by extending their integration technology to support initiatives, such as SOA and BPM."