Rubrik CEO Bipul Sinha has attacked Gartner’s about-to-be-published Data Centre Backup and Recovery MQ as “seriously flawed” and produced by an analyst who applied to join Rubrik but was rejected.
This Magic Quadrant hasn’t even been revealed by Gartner yet. But here we have Rubrik launching a pre-emptive strike.
The MQ has been delayed since last year as, first, Gartner lost four analysts to Rubrik and one to Veeam. It had to appoint new analysts for the work and, according to Rubrik, the lead analyst was the person it decided not to hire, leading to a conflict of interest in the MQ’s production.
Rubrik states: “After his sustained pursuit of a position with Rubrik, we declined to offer Analyst #5 a role, and he expressed his clear disappointment in light of his colleagues’ hirings at Rubrik.”
It appealed to Gartner’s ombudsman about this and there was a review of the MQ, causing a second delay of, we understand, some months. That review effectively came to naught and Rubrik’s position in the MQ, as a visionary we understand, was unchanged. We think it feels strongly that it should be in the Leader’s quadrant.
Sinha states Rubrik “engaged with the Gartner team over several months to remedy a number of significant issues and concerns to no avail, so we felt it was important that the market, including our customers, potential customers, partners and employees, have the full set of facts that are pertinent in objectively evaluating the information contained in this MQ.“
The 2017 Gartner Analyst Team positioned Rubrik in the lower right Visionary quadrant in that version of the MQ;
Sinha thinks Rubrik has been treated unfairly: “Based on objective data, since the 2017 MQ, Rubrik has made significant progress in its business, out-paced all of its competitors, and has had a disproportionately large impact on the Data Center Backup and Recovery market. Yet, this progress has not manifested in any significant movement, as reflected in Rubrik’s position within the 2019 MQ.”
Rubrik states: “Despite a comprehensive 30-page survey submission and 25 formal analyst inquiries over the preceding 12 months, Gartner failed to get many basic facts correct in the draft MQ and Critical Capabilities. In the draft summaries shared with vendors, Rubrik found 17 inaccuracies covering missing functionality, customer adoption, and deployability.
“In some cases, it was clear that the analysts confused us with a smaller competitor in their description of an OEM relationship and in multiple descriptions of how our technology works.”
Blocks & Files cannot recall any vendor going to war with Gartner publicly over its position and standing in a Magic Quandrant. It is a measure of Rubrik’s displeasure and annoyance, and of the reputation of Gartner’s MQs, that Rubrik has taken this unprecedented step.
Fellow supplier Cohesity, enters the MQ for the first time and is also positioned as a visionary. It is, we understand, pleased with that recognition and confident its position will improve as its vision and product roadmap are so good.
We also understand Veeam is pleased to stay in the Leaders’ quadrant.
Note. Here’s a standard MQ explainer: the “magic quadrant” is defined by axes labelled “ability to execute” and “completeness of vision”, and split into four squares tagged “visionaries”, “niche players”, “challengers” and “leaders”.
