Top Data Science & ML Platforms in 2024

Key Insights from the latest Gartner Magic Quadrant

If your work involves ML, it is important to regularly track which platforms are gaining popularity or making new advancements.

Image by Possessed Photography

Gartner has recently released their 2024 Magic Quadrant™ for Data Science & ML Platforms. And, there are some significant changes. Before we discuss the key takeaways, let’s understand what a Magic Quadrant is.

The Magic Quadrant

The Gartner Magic Quadrant research methodology offers a visual competitive positioning of four types of technology providers in rapidly growing markets: Leaders, Visionaries, Niche Players, and Challengers.

The graph has two axes: Completeness of Vision and ability to execute. It is divided into four quadrants:

1. Leaders (upper right): Well-positioned with a clear market vision, established presence, and consistent execution.
2. Visionaries (lower right): Understand market direction but may need more execution.
3. Niche Players (lower left): Specialize in a market segment but need a broad vision.
4. Challengers (upper left): Execute currently but may not anticipate future demands.

Gartner analyzes companies based on criteria like product capabilities, market presence, and service diversification. The findings are updated every one or two years, allowing for changes in company status based on improvements.

Changes compared to the previous Quadrant

Let’s look at the previous quadrant first which was published in 2021.

Now, let’s look at the latest Magic Quadrant:

Key Changes

• All the top 3 cloud providers have made their entry from the Visionaries to Leaders quadrant thanks to their MLOps offerings. GCP offers Vertex AI, Azure offers Azure ML, and AWS offers Sagemaker. Microsoft is slightly ahead of the other two cloud platforms in its ability to execute. It’s only behind Databricks.
  Alibaba Cloud, the 4th largest cloud provider, has moved into Challengers and is close to becoming Leaders.
  IBM has lost the Leader tag and moved to the challenger quadrant. Use
• Platforms like TIBCO Software are out of the quadrant, while Mathworks has left the leader’s quadrant and moved into Niche Players.
• Databricks is the leader at the top regarding the ability to execute.
• Dataiku is the leader who is at the far right in terms of the completeness of the vision.