Niche Player: Pyramid Analytics

Pyramid Analytics provides an integrated suite of products for BI and analytics, including a range of analytics capabilities spanning ad hoc analysis, interactive visualization, dashboards, mobile, collaboration and alerts. The company, which launched Pyramid 2018 last year, was the lowest positioned of all companies on the "completeness of vision" axis of the 2018 Magic Quadrant among all vendors.

Strengths: Because of its broad capabilities, the Pyramid platform is deployed for a wide range of use cases. Reference customers say the system is easy to implement, administer, support and migrate. And the product is integrated with Microsoft's environment with 70 percent of implementations tapping into Microsoft-based enterprise data warehouses.

Cautions: Pyramid scores low on innovation and product vision road map, according to Gartner. The company lacks differentiation in a crowded market and there is a shortage of resources skilled in working with the product. Growing competition from Microsoft's business intelligence products are seen as a potential threat to the company's viability.