The latest Gartner Magic Quadrant for Master Data Management Solutions was published a month ago as touched in the post Disruptive Forces in MDM Land.
In the section about IBM, there were this note: “IBM declined to participate in this research and did not supply supplemental information. Gartner’s analysis is therefore based on other credible sources, including previous research input from IBM, customer inquiries, Peer Insights reviews submitted during the period covered by this research and other publicly available information.”
My guess is that Gartner and IBM already had a bad relation around the previous report which led to that this report was delayed a couple of months as told in the post Gartner MDM Magic Quadrant in Overtime.
Today Nancy Hensley of IBM published a post called Understanding the new Gartner MDM Magic Quadrant and the IBM position. In here Nancy explains that IBM chose not to participate because IBM has a different point of view on where the MDM marketplace is going. In other words: The Gartner MDM market view is old school.
Perhaps magic quadrants, and analyst reports in general, are old school then. Perhaps the new school is that IBM and all the other vendors explain themselves – and can be reviewed by the (professional) crowd. Well, this is the idea behind The Disruptive MDM List.
Liliendahl on Data Quality 
Interesting how IBM handled this situation like a PR situation. The reality (as you know) is that IBM never really made an attempt to address the market demand when it comes to MDM. The true multi-domain is the need yesterday, it is today and it will be there for a foreseeable future. Given IBM’s focus is all transforming to be a cloud company (which they are doing a really bad job at) and Watson, no wonder they have to divest MDM investment. That just shows in the report!
Thanks for commenting Prash. What puzzles me a bit is what IBM did between January 17 and October 17 to, in the eyes of Gartner, climb up in the quadrant.
Reading the IBM reply, I was surprised that 30% of customers apparently didn’t think their MDM had improved data quality. I’d quite like to know whether customers of other solutions think the same. If they do then there is a serious question on a primary purpose of MDM.