If you follow the Operational DBMS market, you may have seen the recently-published Gartner Operational DBMS Magic Quadrant for 2018. Each year, Gartner creates specific criteria that each vendor must meet in order to be considered for the MQ. And because the criteria changes from year to year, some vendor names on the MQ also change. Case in point: Couchbase was included in the Operational DBMS Magic Quadrants from 2013 until 2016, but due to the changing criteria, not in 2017 and 2018.
This year, Gartner’s criteria focused on license revenue, growth, customer reviews, and technical capabilities. While technical capabilities and customer reviews remain mainstay criteria, license revenue and growth requirements vary from year to year. Couchbase hit the license revenue growth, technical capabilities, and customer reviews criteria for 2018, but fell slightly short on the license revenue requirement, and therefore, was not included in the 2018 MQ. Again, Gartner’s changing criteria helps explain why some vendors are in the MQ one year vs. another.
What is not published as part of the Magic Quadrants is company growth, industry recognition, and most importantly, customer feedback. Couchbase’s revenue grew 60% year over year, and within the past two months, we opened a new office in Paris, relocated our HQ to a new building in Santa Clara, and were voted best in-memory database by readers of DBTA. We also launched two major releases of our flagship product over the past year, earned “Top Rated” status on peer reviews site TrustRadius, and were recently named a Forbes Next Billion-Dollar Startup. Most importantly, where we really find the most “magic” is directly from our customers, as we’ve captured here during our past Couchbase Connect conferences.
You’d be hard pressed to find anyone in the tech industry who hasn’t heard of Gartner and its coveted Magic Quadrants, and there’s no doubt that being included provides a good deal of visibility. But right now, in addition to the aforementioned lists and distinctions, you can also find Couchbase included in Gartner’s recent State of the Operational DBMS Market, 2018, which was published on September 6th. And for the promising companies that didn’t make the Operational DBMS MQ, Gartner has the “Other Vendors to Consider” report for 2018, where you’ll find Couchbase. And look out for the upcoming Forrester Wave on NoSQL Databases, due out in March 2019. We may not be on this year’s Magic Quadrant, but we are showing up in plenty of other places!
