Hippo is the Newest Member of the Gartner MQ Country Club

It's that time of year again when our networks are suddenly flooded with vendors gloating about their inclusion in the 'Magic Quadrant'. Are there any fresh faces? Was anyone relegated? Let's have a look.

Those of you who have been with us for some time can recall our general sentiment of these lists. We enjoy discussing them; where they went right and where they went wrong (Microsoft last year...).

Once again this year we have the usual suspects with Sitecore and Adobe sword fighting atop the leader board. Acquia, again pulling Drupal further into the Leaders quadrant. Leaders are rounded out with the stately vendors of Oracle, HP, IBM, OpenText, SDL and EPiServer completing the Leaders Quadrant which is swelling in numbers.

Not Much Has Changed

In the twelve months since the last Gartner report, we notice a single new addition and not one vendor dropped. We should also mention that since Telerik was purchased, the parent company assumed its last position, so long as it continues to meet the criteria. In this case Progress has now claimed their position in the upper region of the Niche Players quadrant.

Hippo Makes the Grade

The only new addition to the report finds Netherlands based Java CMS platform, Hippo land squarely in the middle of the Niche Players quadrant (and pushing toward the upper right).



Watch CMS-Connected present the Hippo CMS in our Vendor Spotlight

This is what Gartner had to say about Hippo's ability to execute and completeness of vision in the CMS market:
 

Strengths

• The combination of enterprise-level capabilities on top of the standards-based, well-designed Java Content Repository (Apache Jackrabbit) provides a solid and attractive basis for Hippo's offering.
• Hippo's OSS delivery model is very attractive to those unable to pay the higher prices of other Java offerings that are closed source.
• In 2Q15, Hippo entered a partnership with EMC that could open up fresh opportunities and raise Hippo's profile. It could also make U.S. decision makers more confident about including Hippo on their long lists and short lists.

Cautions

• Hippo's presence in North America is still modest compared with that of other European vendors.
• Hippo has been unable to use its OSS context to gain as much visibility and as extensive a partner ecosystem as other OSS communities with which it competes. Decision makers may decide that Hippo cannot continue to develop at the rate required for the solution at hand.
• Hippo's vision and messaging was once leading-edge, but has since become more mainstream. Its customer deployment examples are less innovative than those provided by some of its competitors.

Seems that Hippo is on the upswing (and has been for some time). They were selected by CMS Critic as Open Source CMS Critics Choice in 2013.

Do you currently run Hippo CMS? What are your most beloved features that you haven't found elsewhere? Leave us a note below.