MongoDB Named a Leader in the 2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Cloud Database Management Systems

Vivek Bhalla
January 16, 2024

MongoDB is proud to be named a Leader in the 2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant for Cloud Database Management Systems (CDBMS). We believe this makes MongoDB the only dedicated application database provider recognized as a Leader for two years running.

At MongoDB, our focus on serving the needs of the community and adopters of the developer data platform drives our innovation and product ethos. This year it has led to an unprecedented level of new features and capabilities. Most acutely now, senior executives and decision makers want to exploit data and AI to transform their organizations. Yet most enterprises struggle in this endeavor due to the complexity of their database management systems that inhibit their developers from achieving strategic and critical objectives rather than aiding them.

The foundational concept behind MongoDB’s developer data platform has been to overcome the most critical challenges around enterprise data, such as the unification of data across multiple applications, data synchronization, complexity with multitudes of workload-specific tools and technologies, vendor lock-in for proprietary formats, poor interoperability, and duplicate efforts across cloud platforms. The most recent innovations on our platform simplify your operational, transactional, and AI-powered workloads and maintain the kind of flexibility and openness that allows your organization to stay agile as you scale with cost-efficiency, transparency, and security in mind.

It’s not like there aren’t other phones or other cars, but how it’s all packaged together in a way that’s so compelling and so user-friendly and enables people to do what they want to do, is essentially what differentiates MongoDB. There’s other [tools] out there, but it’s very clunky for a developer to connect their vector data to their metadata, to their core data, to be able to orchestrate all that, then figure out how to do the embeddings and all that. It just becomes a very convoluted process.¹
Dev Ittycheria, MongoDB CEO - November 2023

“Gartner defines the market for cloud database management systems (DBMSs) as the market for software products that store and manipulate data and that are primarily delivered as software as a service (SaaS) in the cloud. Cloud DBMSs may optionally be capable of running on-premises, or in hybrid, multicloud, or intercloud configurations.”

To help users understand this emerging technology landscape, Gartner published its first Magic Quadrant for Cloud Database Management Systems back in 2020. Three years on and after evolving criteria to reflect how enterprise needs are changing, Gartner has named MongoDB as a Leader for the second consecutive year for the latest 2023 Magic Quadrant.

We believe MongoDB was named a Leader in this report partly because of new capabilities such as Vector Search and Queryable Encryption, that have been brought to market to meet the ever-increasing demand for new applications and workloads. In addition to listening to developers’ and their organizations’ needs for new capabilities, MongoDB’s product teams have also been obsessed with ensuring new functionality does not equate to increased complexity, nor forsake the tenet of intuitive ease of use. Capabilities such as the Stable API ensure that applications are future-proofed to work with subsequent MongoDB releases, something unprecedented and unique today. Now, Relational Migrator enables new adopters to migrate their existing applications and workloads in a prescriptive and guided manner that encourages best practices and sound architectural design.

A tailored holistic approach - people, process, and technology

Digital transformation and change management can be an arduous and daunting prospect, particularly in the absence of expertise and guidance from those who have walked the same path previously. While technology is an enabler, such initiatives will fail without due consideration for the appropriate skills and promotion of tried-and-tested best practices.

At MongoDB, this is an intrinsic element to how we embrace and welcome new adopters of our developer data platform — a defacto standard for document database-oriented application development. In 2023, we launched two new programs to ensure developers and their organizations new to MongoDB are set up for success.

The first was Atlas for Industries to help organizations accelerate cloud adoption and modernization by utilizing industry-specific expertise, programs, partnerships, and integrated solutions. No less than seven vertical-specific solutions were launched in 2023 covering Atlas for Financial Services, Government, Manufacturing and Automotive, Retail, Healthcare, Insurance, and Telecommunications. In each instance, organizations and their teams gain access to expert-led architectural design reviews, partner integrations and toolchains, innovation workshops, professional services teams, and dedicated training to ensure the relevant knowledge is harnessed and proliferates throughout the entire organization.

The second initiative was the MongoDB AI Innovators Program, which provides organizations building AI-powered applications and technology with access to expert technical support and guidance, MongoDB Atlas credits, collaboration opportunities via our partner ecosystem, and joint go-to-market activities with MongoDB to accelerate innovation and time to market. The program consists of two tracks: one for early-stage ventures and another for more established companies. Both provide opportunities to join a community of founders and developers while gaining access to dedicated resources, training, and counsel from subject matter experts.

Realizing the value of MongoDB

The success of those taking advantage of MongoDB’s developer data platform is abundant, as evidenced when one looks at adopters among the most successful of enterprises across all industries:

64 of the Fortune 100
192 of the Fortune 500
457 of the Fortune 2000

The community of MongoDB users have also spoken on Gartner Peer Insights™; 94% of MongoDB users who provided reviews to Gartner Peer Insights platform said they would recommend us² (based on 49 ratings with an average of 4.6 out of 5 stars in the last 12 months, as of 15 January, 2023).

An ecosystem of interoperability

Having a well-architected data platform is foundational, however working in a vacuum is another potential pitfall. Every organization, new or established, has infrastructure that must integrate and work together. At MongoDB, we realize it is critical that your application database works as a well-oiled component alongside the rest of your tooling ecosystem. It is imperative that technology partners work seamlessly with one another and in a coordinated and consistent manner.

For this reason, MongoDB has cultivated a partner ecosystem; a collaborative approach spanning innovative and bleeding edge pioneers of genAI, established and ubiquitous cloud providers, and a further 1000+ technology and service integration partners.

The value of system integrators (SI) is something MongoDB does not underestimate. In the last 12 months, MongoDB has certified over 10,000 SI Associates and Architects. These certifications enable our SI partners to accelerate our clients’ AI journeys by enabling sound design approaches, ensuring best practices are followed, and expediting delivery. Data accessibility is a critical element and our certification programs rapidly enable SIs to enable organizations to meet these challenging demands.

Quantity is one thing, but what of the quality of these partnerships? It’s worth noting that MongoDB is the only independent software vendor (ISV) featured in each of the top four cloud providers’ consoles and start up programs. Our efforts have not only been recognised by the leading analyst firms but by our top tier technology partners as evidenced by the awards received in 2023 alone:

AWS EMEA Marketplace Partner of the Year
AWS ISV Partner of the Year for ASEAN
AWS ISV Partner of the Year for Chile
AWS ISV Partner of the Year for Taiwan
Google Cloud Technology Partner of the Year for Data Management
Google Cloud Data — Smart Analytics Technology Partner of the Year

MongoDB also signed a strategic partnership with Microsoft in 2023. This followed a four-year extension to a strategic global partnership with Alibaba. MongoDB has worked closely with AWS to enhance the value offered via AI-powered AWS CodeWhisperer and Bedrock collaborative efforts.

The importance of a unified ecosystem to enable generative AI use cases on the same stack that supports traditional transactional and analytical use cases is critical to ensure simplification, lower latency, and cost containment.
Sanjeev Mohan, SanjMo Principal, and former Gartner Research VP - Big Data and Advanced Analytics

In his Spotlight document³, Mohan lauds MongoDB for its extensive integration with the ever-expanding ecosystem of large language model (LLM) providers as well as ISVs developing and deploying the AI value chain.

Evaluating a leader in Magic Quadrant for Cloud Database Management Systems

“Which are the competing players in the major technology markets? How are they positioned to help you over the long haul? A Gartner Magic Quadrant is a culmination of research in a specific market, giving you a wide-angle view of the relative positions of the market’s competitors.

By applying a graphical treatment and a uniform set of evaluation criteria, a Magic Quadrant helps you quickly ascertain how well technology providers are executing their stated visions and how well they are performing against Gartner’s market view." ⁴

MongoDB’s take: Given that they encompass technical, commercial, operational and strategic considerations, Gartner’s evaluation of 19 cloud DBMS vendors against 15 criteria (seven on execution and eight on vision) is comprehensive and extensive.

Our market presence, above-market growth rates, and establishment as a nonrelational database standard have been consistently highlighted as strengths by several analyst firms and research organizations prior to the publication of this report⁵. It is our opinion that our placement as a Leader in this Magic Quadrant is a reflection of these trends as well as our holistic approach to supporting the MongoDB community.

Visit the Gartner website to obtain the full report (requires Gartner subscription)⁶.

Getting started on your cloud journey

MongoDB Atlas is engineered to help you make the shift to the cloud. We would appreciate the opportunity to understand more about your key transformation initiatives and workshop ideas with your teams to accelerate delivery. In the interim, your engineers and developers can familiarize themselves with MongoDB right away by signing up for a free account on MongoDB Atlas. Have them create a free database cluster, load your own data or our sample data sets, and explore what’s possible within the platform.

Following on from our enhanced MongoDB University program, launched in November 2022, and in June 2023 MongoDB partnered with digital learning providers, such as Coursera and LinkedIn Learning, to make our software development courses available to more students worldwide. Additionally, the MongoDB Developer Center hosts an array of resources including tutorials, sample code, videos, and documentation.

¹ Source: SiliconANGLE article, November 2023: “MongoDB looks to enable developers to do more sophisticated analytics”, Ryan Stevens

² Gartner® and Peer Insights™ are trademarks of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Gartner Peer Insights content consists of the opinions of individual end users based on their own experiences, and should not be construed as statements of fact, nor do they represent the views of Gartner or its affiliates. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in this content nor makes any warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this content, about its accuracy or completeness, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

³ Source: SanjMo article, December 2023: “Spotlight: Evaluating MongoDB Atlas Vector Search”, Sanjeev Mohan

⁴ Source: Gartner, January 2023: “Positioning technology players within a specific market”

⁵ Source: Forrester Wave: Translytical Data Platforms, Q4 2022, ISG (Ventana Research) Operational Data Platforms 2023 Value Index and DB-Engines

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. The Gartner logo is a trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc., and/or its affiliates, and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

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