Who's at the Top of Gartner's 2020 UEM Magic Quadrant? Intune.

If you're not familiar with Gartner's Magic Quadrant, it's an interesting way to look at technology companies and where they land in terms of completeness of vision and ability to execute. The chart is broken into four quadrants: niche players, visionaries, challengers, and leaders. A lot of vision without the ability to follow through makes you a visionary; good execution without the vision puts you in the challenger category. But when vision and execution come together, that's where the magic happens and you become a leader. Gartner evaluates companies for all kinds of different categories (earlier this year, we talked about Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Content Services Platforms). Who's at the top of the Magic Quadrant this year for Unified Endpoint Management (UEM)?

Gartner's 2020 Magic Quadrant for Unified Endpoint Management

It's clear to see here that Microsoft comes out the closest to the top right corner, which would demonstrate the highest possible combination of vision and execution. This reflects Microsoft's determination to combine value and functionality, and to constantly revise in response to customer feedback. (This year Microsoft also officially combined Configuration Manager and Intune into Microsoft Endpoint Manager, simplifying terminology for what they've always considered one solution anyway.) Other 2020 UEM leaders are VMware and IBM, with alternative competitors falling much closer to (or inside) the niche players quadrant. Still, every enterprise has room for improvement. To see what Gartner identifies as strengths and cautions for each of these companies, see their full report.

Last Year's UEM Magic Quadrant (2019)

Last year's Magic Quadrant for UEM also showed Microsoft as a leader, but you can see that its place has risen significantly since then, on both the vision and the execution axes. According to Microsoft, this is because of a decisive and concrete change in the way the Microsoft Endpoint Manager team operates. It began to measure value most predominantly in usage (rather than, say, revenue), building its products for user frequency and experience. As Corporate Vice President Brad Anderson says, "We stopped celebrating the shipment of a new product and instead started throwing all our energy into supporting our customers’ usage goals."

Other Magic Quadrant & Gartner News

• This isn't the only Magic Quadrant category where Microsoft shows up as a leader. Check out these other areas it made the cut in 2020.
• Leaders in Gartner's 2020 Magic Quadrant for Data Science and Machine Learning Platforms include SAS, Databricks, and TIBCO Software.
• The Magic Quadrant for Data Integration Tools features Informatica, IBM, and SAP as top leaders.
• In the Magic Quadrant for Cloud ERP for Product-Centric Enterprises, the only company to emerge in the leader quadrant was Oracle. Here Microsoft narrowly missed it, falling into the visionary quadrant instead.
• Not surprisingly, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, and Google came out as the top leaders in the Magic Quadrant for Cloud AI Developer Services.
• And the Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms showed Microsoft and Tableau as top leaders.
• Gartner recognized Microsoft as a Peer Insights Customers’ Choice for CRM Lead Management. This recognition goes to vendors who received both the highest number of reviews and the highest overall user ratings.
• Industrial IoT Platform.

A Little More About Gartner

Gartner is a research and advisory company founded in 1979 that provides technology & business insights and tools, including through assessments and visual representations like the Magic Quadrant. As a research organization, it doesn't endorse any particular vendors but rather offers its view of those companies' performance and status in the current technology field. If you're interested in Gartner's assessment charts, take a look at our articles on their Hype Cycle for AI and Cloud Security.

Moving beyond 2020 news...see the 2021 UEM Magic Quadrant or tech trends in 2021.