As you may have seen in the past few weeks, Gartner, under the leadership of analyst Dwight Klappich, released the 2014 version of the Magic Quadrant for Warehouse Management Systems.

Softeon is very pleased with the results.

The Gartner Magic Quadrants of course are used across many technology and service areas, and place vendors with the famous “dots” somewhere within the four quadrant’s that give the tool its name.

The two dimensions that form the quadrant are “completeness of vision” and “ability to execute,” with there being in effect a high and low for each of these attributes, creating the four section. The definitions of these dimensions varies by technology area, and are well spelled out in each document.

We aren’t allowed to publish the Quadrant itself, which is available to Garner clients.  But this year Softeon again improved its position, strongly placed in what we would say is the top spot in the “Visionaries” quadrant just outside the Leaders area.

We scored very well on “Vision,” and were just below the dividing line on “Ability to Execute,” a few millimeters you might say from jumping into the Leaders section.

We improved noticeably in Gartner’s eye from the 2103 Quadrant, a recognition of how well things are going at Softeon, our market momentum, and continued development of cutting edge WMS and supply chain execution functionality.

Relative to Softeon, Gartner noted that “While its roots are in WMSs, the vendor [Softeon] has a compelling SCE convergence vision and portfolio today. Softeon is one of the more innovative, partner-oriented vendors in this market.”

It added that “Softeon offers a broad and deep suite of SCE capabilities centered on its strength in WMSs, including core WMS and extended WMS capabilities, as well as functional areas like distributed order management, returns management, SCP and direct store delivery on a common technical platform.”

Under Softeon strengths, Gartner also noted that “The vendor’s WMS is built on a strong and flexible SOA [Service Oriented Architecture] that has allowed it to rapidly introduce new capabilities. Although the product is not yet a truly zero-modification environment, the company offers tools, such as a strong rule engine, that allow for user tailoring without modification.”

Gartner also commented that we have “a strong offshore development organization, with more than 350 engineers,” and, we are very pleased to note, Gartner also recognized Softeon’s industry-leading track record of customer success and satisfaction: “Customers were very complimentary of the vendor, its solutions and service, particularly its structured solution delivery methodology, which Softeon calls Iterative Solution Realization.”

So, this is good news for all of us here at Softeon, the result of a lot of work to make sure we well-communicated our growing success, strong capabilities and value proposition, and most importantly the results our customers are achieving using our solutions.

Expect more such progress in 2015.