Oct
Hyland is lone challenger in Gartner Magic Quadrant!
Every year, Gartner Inc., an international information technology research and advisory company, produces the Magic Quadrant for enterprise content management (MQ for ECM). Over the years, it has become a popular tool for learning more about the current position of leading vendors and their respective ECM solutions.
Those positioned in the four quadrants — Leaders, Challengers, Visionaries and Niche Players — share certain characteristics. Here is a link that explains a bit more about what these mean: http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=131166#Figure_2_
For this year’s Magic Quadrant, which was released on October 15, 2009, Hyland Software is the lone Challenger.
What does Hyland’s position in the Gartner MQ mean?
Hyland’s Challenger position in the MQ for ECM demonstrates that the company continues to perform exceptionally well in a rapidly changing and competitive market. In each of the past five years, our license revenue growth has consistently been double or triple the industry’s 10% compound annual growth rate. Hyland added more than 700 new customers each year during that period.
As Gartner noted in the MQ, our existing clients are happy and intensely loyal. Each year, 98% of them renew their maintenance contracts. Year after year, we earn more than 50% of our new license revenues through repeat sales to existing clients. One thing these numbers certainly prove is that OnBase is always evolving to meet our customers’ ever-changing needs.
Could it be that Hyland lacks long-term vision?
Hyland doesn’t lack long-term vision. Our long-term vision is simply more focused and specific than the broad brush MQ evaluation. For example, we’re focused on transactional document and process management applications. In contrast, the MQ defines the ECM market much more broadly.
It evaluates technologies that we do not provide today and are very unlikely to develop in the future. For example, why would Hyland develop collaborative document management and web publishing capabilities when Microsoft is clearly establishing itself as the dominant player in those areas?
It’s unfortunate but analysts rarely give Hyland credit for having the vision not to embrace their advice. Let me share a few examples:
• For several years, Hyland was criticized for not developing or buying Web content management (WCM) applications. Today, Gartner feels ECM suite vendors cannot compete with the high-end capabilities provided by pure-play WCM vendors. As a result, Gartner declared WCM to be a distinct market and created a separate MQ for it. Hyland might not be in business today if we pursued a WCM strategy at the expense of our core strengths.
• Not long ago industry watchers deemed Hyland’s commitment to developing OnBase on Microsoft platforms to be a weakness. Today, most analysts view OnBase’s .NET architecture to be a competitive advantage given the extraordinary adoption of SharePoint for basic document management capabilities.
Analysts may never consider Hyland to be the most visionary software provider in the ECM industry. Our goal, though, is to keep up with, not get far ahead of, the market’s ability to make meaningful use of ECM technologies. After all, most organizations purchase solutions for the problems they have today, not for those that they may have three or more years from now.
I would challenge you to find another ECM vendor as committed to developing new ways to help customers solve the problems they tell us are the most critical. For as long as we uphold that commitment, Hyland’s future remains bright.
Thanks for your time. If you have any questions about the MQ for ECM, or Hyland’s strategy and position in the market, please see my contact information below.
Regards,
Ken
Ken Burns
Analyst Relations Manager
Hyland Software
Ken.Burns@OnBase.com
(440)788-5888
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/ken-burns/0/7a8/544