Gartner has just published its 2013 Magic Quadrant for Mobile Application Development Platforms. This year, MicroStrategy made its debut in the report, being positioned by Gartner in the Challengers quadrant.

Get free access to the report, compliments of MicroStrategy, here.

For six consecutive years, Gartner has positioned MicroStrategy’s Analytics Platform in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence. “MicroStrategy Mobile is now independently recognized for the value it offers customers searching specifically for a mobile app platform,” says MicroStrategy President, Paul Zolfaghari.  “MicroStrategy Mobile brings to life analytics, transactions, workflows and multimedia in platform-built custom native apps for tablets and smartphones. As a result, we have seen hundreds of our customers use our mobile platform to build apps that reach beyond BI and include enterprise workflow and transactional processing.”

Here is the actual Magic Quadrant and synopsis of MicroStrategy discussed in detail in the Gartner report.

MicroStrategy

Widely known as a business intelligence vendor, MicroStrategy offers a comprehensive MADP supporting the creation, deployment and measurement of transactional, as well as information-centric, applications. Cross-platform development is performed using a visual tool to compose and configure UI and functional elements, and to tune the layout for the necessary screen sizes and form factors. Client-side functionality is delivered through a MicroStrategy-developed container, leveraging native widgets on each of the supported platforms. The result is a cross-platform application that has a native user experience. In addition to MicroStrategy’s analytics server, a mobility server is provided to support user management, security, data storage, back-end integration and dynamic provisioning of applications to the client devices. Somewhat unusual for a vendor at the enterprise end of the MADP landscape, MicroStrategy offers a hands-on approach to platform evaluation through a downloadable free trial, as well as a free perpetual license for up to 10 users. It also offers a paid two-week QuickStrike program that includes strategic guidance, professional graphics design, development support and user testing.

Appropriate Use: MicroStrategy is a good choice for mobile scenarios that span the life cycle of data creation, capture and analysis, or where the desire for reduced time to benefit or to support rapidly evolving business requirements outweighs the need for standards-based development.

Strengths

• MicroStrategy’s platform and customer engagement model emphasizes the creation of polished UIs, resulting in business applications that have visual appeal in customer-facing business scenarios, such as side-by-side selling.
• The platform’s tooling and metadata-driven architecture lend themselves to RAD and iteration, while supporting enterprise requirements for security and reliability.
• MicroStrategy’s advanced data analytics and mobile dashboard capabilities can be used to monitor and measure application usage patterns, and to mine and analyze business data.
• As with other platforms based on a managed-client/server architecture, data synchronization is provided to support offline functionality.

Cautions

• While MicroStrategy’s mobility platform is suitable for transactional applications, the inclusion of MicroStrategy’s analytics server makes the platform primarily desirable for scenarios that also require data analytics.
• The toolset’s visual approach to AD is not, as of yet, suited to scenarios that require significant customization.