2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Digital Employee Experience Management Tools
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According to Gartner, “through 2028, more than half of digital workplace leaders who don’t focus on digital employee experience and enablement will risk being commoditized or replaced.”
That means it’s never been more critical for IT leaders to put in place the right solution to monitor, measure and improve the digital employee experience.
Ivanti is proud to have been recognized as a Visionary in the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant for Digital Employee Experience Management Tools.
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Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Digital Employee Experience Management Tools, Dan Wilson, Tom Cipolla, Stuart Downes, Autumn Stanish, Lina Al Dana, 26 August 2024
Tools that continuously identify opportunities to improve the digital employee experience based on usage and performance data are critical for a thriving digital workplace. This research guides end-user services and digital workplace leaders in selecting the right DEX tool vendor.
Strategic Planning Assumptions
By 2026, 50% of digital workplace leaders will have established a DEX strategy and tool, up from 30% in 2024.
Through 2027, 80% of DEX tool deployments that account for only IT-focused use cases will fail to achieve a sustainable ROI.
Through 2027, 75% of organizations without a DEX strategy and tool will fail to successfully reduce digital friction.
Through 2028, more than half of digital workplace leaders who don’t focus on digital employee experience and enablement will risk being commoditized or replaced.
By 2028, digital workplace teams that have fully implemented a DEX tool will carry half the backlog of those that have not.
By 2028, digital workplace teams that have fully implemented a DEX tool will carry half the backlog of those that have not.
Market Definition/Description
Digital employee experience (DEX) management tools measure and continuously improve the performance of and employee sentiment toward company-provided technology. Near-real-time processing of aggregated data from endpoints, applications, employee sentiment and organizational context surfaces actionable insights and drives self-healing automations, optimized support and employee engagement. Insights and self-healing can enhance employee interactions with self-service portals and chatbots. They also help IT support, asset management, procurement and other teams whose work depends on reliable information.
DEX tools help IT leaders improve the digital employee experience and empower IT workers to shift focus from technology management to more business-value-added work.
Benefits include:
- Fewer IT issues that disrupt and impede employee productivity
- Reduced IT overhead through automation
- Improved IT support with faster incident resolution and improved problem management
- Improved endpoint configuration and patch compliance
- Better balance of objective and subjective success measures, including technology adoption, performance and employee sentiment
- Increased workforce engagement and digital dexterity
- IT becoming more proactive and human-centric
- Increased ability to attract and retain talent
Common use cases include:
- Uncovering unreported technology issues and self-healing repeatable issues with automation.
- Removing unused licensed software to reduce costs. Providing basic software asset management (SAM) functionality for those without a SAM tool.
- Transitioning from scheduled to performance-based refresh cycles.
- Reducing security risk and improving patching compliance by identifying and remediating the cause of missing patches, which endpoint management or patching tools often cannot identify or self-heal.
- Ensuring readiness for OS upgrades inclusive of reliability, capacity, performance, configuration and requirements checks.
- Improving major incident and problem-management processes by offering more contextualized data to determine root cause.
- Establishing digital personas based on technology usage data to create technology bundles, simplifying and accelerating employee onboarding.
- Discovering consumption of technology that IT did not provide or approve and could expose the organization to security and compliance risk if not integrated into standard architectures.
- Actively measuring technology performance and employee experience to focus on continuous endpoint engineering and proactive operations.
Mandatory Features
The mandatory features for this market include:
- Data Collection:
- Agent for Windows
- Integration with HR systems or directory services for organizational context attributes
- Integration with IT service management (ITSM) platforms for service desk and ITSM process enhancements
- APIs to import data from other IT management tools and data sources
- Employee sentiment surveys
- Analysis and Insights:
- DEX scoring (what is measured and how the scores are calculated varies by tool)
- Anomaly detection
- Device and application usage
- Root cause analysis
- Taking Action:
- Execution of script, self-healing automation or other technology action
- Employee engagement through agent-based pop-up or toast notification, or through workstream collaboration tools, such as Teams and Slack, to inform or adjust employee behavior
- Predefined library of scripts and self-healing automations
- Customer-defined workflows
Common Features
The common features for this market include:
- Data Collection:
- Agent for macOS
- Agent for Android
- Agent for Linux
- Agent for ChromeOS
- Integration with virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and desktop as a service (DaaS) solutions for remote connection protocol and endpoint data
- SaaS app support via browser extension
- API-based import from SaaS applications and graphs
- Advanced and/or event-triggered surveys
- Anonymization and privacy functionality to meet regulatory or workers’ council requirements
- Analysis and Insights:
- Persona-based DEX scoring — analyzes DEX scores by defined digital persona
- Hardware-failure prediction analytics
- Issue-to-event correlation analytics
- Issue prioritization by urgency, impact and quantity
- Inform endpoint device life cycle based on warranty, time or actual performance versus consumption
- Define digital personas to align technology needs to employee segments
- Identify and remove unused or rogue software
- Assess OS upgrade compatibility and readiness
- Customer-defined data anonymization and defined data-retention policies
- In-console custom reporting
- Identify obsolete or vulnerable software
- Desired-state configuration compliance and healing
- Support sustainability goals by monitoring power consumption, configuring power savings features and engaging employees to promote better habits
- Identify common SaaS application disruption and outages
- Integrations:
- ITSM self-service website and chatbot
- ITSM incident and problem management
- Identity provider for single sign-on (SSO) and role-based access control (RBAC)
- Data export to business intelligence (BI) or data analytics platform
- Endpoint management tools
- Identity and security tools
- Other monitoring and observability tools
- Technology asset management
- Configuration management
- Environmental, social and governance (ESG) management and reporting software
- Regulatory Compliance and Certifications:
- CCPA/CPRA
- FedRAMP
- ISO 27000 family
- SOC 2
- HIPAA
- CSA STAR
- PCI DSS
Magic Quadrant
Figure 1: Magic Quadrant for Digital Employee Experience Management Tools
Vendor Strengths and Cautions
1E
1E is a Leader in this Magic Quadrant. Its 1E Platform is sold primarily as a SaaS offering, hosted in Microsoft Azure. 1E’s operations span the U.K., the U.S. and India. Its customers tend to be global, enterprise customers concentrated in North America and Europe. 1E is private equity owned.
OS support includes Windows (client, server and IoT), macOS, IGEL OS and Linux. DEX management for applications is available, virtualization is limited to Citrix environments, but unified communications (UC) is not offered. The 1E Platform integrates with ServiceNow for ITSM. The vendor provides a library of remediations and customers can create their own using low/no-code workflow orchestration.
- Market responsiveness: 1E’s ability to respond to market dynamics is exemplified by its shift into DEX a few years ago and more recently by its use-case-specific solution packs — 1E for Microsoft Intune and 1E for Device Refresh. Both offer a lower price point than 1E’s standard bundles and help customers bridge from enhanced endpoint management to DEX.
- Operations: 1E’s elastic SaaS architecture, which launched in early 2024, is highly extensible via DEX Packs, REST APIs and direct integrations with ServiceNow, DataDog and PagerDuty, among others. It can support over 1 million endpoints in a single customer tenant and provide local data residency where Microsoft has Azure data centers. 1E also has partners that can help the company grow and scale.
- Sales strategy: 1E has simplified its DEX tool packaging to three bundles, several add-ons and solution packs. This reduces cost-based barriers to entry, which helps narrow focus and maximize ROI. Customers can add new features as they mature their DEX strategy. The effectiveness of 1E’s sales strategy is also demonstrated by the company amassing the second largest market share in this research.
- Vertical industry strategy: 1E believes that DEX tools transcend vertical industries and does not differentiate its product, marketing or sales strategy based on industry verticals. This may limit its ability to be successful within markets that have specialized regulatory or security requirements.
- Product strategy: 1E launched its second-generation SaaS platform in early 2024 to replace first-generation architecture; however, most of its installed base still run 1E Tachyon on-premises or hosted in the cloud. This complicates the company’s support and product life cycles while it tries to migrate customers to SaaS, which will take time and significant effort.
- Product: Many 1E customers use and depend on its traditional, non-DEX products to address gaps in endpoint management technology. Despite the company’s pivot to DEX, traditional products may take development and support time, effort and resources away from its DEX product.
Access IT Automation
Access IT Automation is a Niche Player in this Magic Quadrant. Its Access Symphony product is sold primarily as an on-premises or cloud-hosted offering in Microsoft Azure. The company’s operations are U.S.- and U.K.-based, and its customers are primarily large financial services organizations in North America and Europe. Access IT Automation is privately owned.
Access Symphony implementations are customized to each customer’s integration and reporting requirements. OS support includes Windows, Android and iOS/iPadOS. Turnkey DEX management for applications, virtualization and UC are not offered, but the vendor can build API-based integrations if requested. Access Symphony integrates with ServiceNow for ITSM. The vendor provides a library of remediations and customers can create their own using low/no-code workflow orchestration.
- Operations: Access IT Automation reports having several million actively deployed DEX endpoints, with its largest customer contributing over 1 million. Access Symphony is not available via turnkey SaaS, but rather is installed on-premises or self-hosted in any Microsoft Azure region.
- Overall viability: Access IT Automation is privately owned and founder led. It has demonstrated consistent revenue growth and its leadership is stable, with most of its leaders having been with the company since it was founded.
- Market understanding: All implementations of Access Symphony are customized to address each customer’s unique environments, integrations and reporting requirements. The product’s overall value proposition is focused on automated endpoint management. This resonates with the regions, verticals and maturity level of primary target customers, which are large and complex in nature.
- Marketing execution: Access IT Automation has built little brand awareness in the DEX tools market. It is rarely mentioned by Gartner clients or competitors, and was absent from customer reviews on Gartner Peer Insights and similar sources. The content of the vendor’s website does not address DEX-related challenges and solutions.
- Geographic strategy: Access IT Automation is focused primarily on North America and Europe, and its partners are primarily technology integration focused (as opposed to sales and service enablement focused), presenting potential challenges expanding into other geographies.
- Business model: Access IT Automation is smaller than most of its competitors and will be challenged to scale to compete with others in growth mode. Its offerings are likely to lag those of competitors due to Access Symphony’s incompleteness in meeting the full DEX feature set standards.
Almaden
Almaden is a Niche Player in this Magic Quadrant. Its Collective IQ (CIQ) product is sold primarily as a SaaS offering, hosted in Amazon Web Services. Almaden’s operations are based in the U.S., the U.K. and Brazil. The company focuses on midmarket and enterprise customers, primarily in South America. Almaden is privately owned.
OS support includes Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and thin clients. DEX management for Microsoft Teams UC is available, but virtualization is not offered. Application experience is limited to those locally installed on PCs. ITSM integration is via APIs. Almaden does not provide a library of remediations, but customers can create their own using a virtual assistant and low-code workflow orchestration.
- Sales strategy: Almaden’s value proposition delivers rapid ROI for IT service desks by reducing tickets. CIQ has simple bundling with an Essentials Edition that includes DEX and IT asset management (ITAM) capabilities, and a Business Edition that includes AlmaAI capabilities. CIQ is less expensive than other products in this market. Almaden offers discounting that aligns with budgets of small to enterprise customers, resellers and managed service providers.
- Overall viability: Almaden is privately owned and founder led. It has demonstrated consistent revenue growth. Its merger with Automatos in 2022 improved the company’s scale and viability. Company leadership is stable, with most leaders having been with the company since it was founded.
- Product strategy: Almaden’s product strategy is focused on customer needs and ease of use, and is less concerned about trying to keep pace with the competition. For example, the company provides a virtual assistant and remote control tool for support. CIQ’s value proposition, feature set and roadmap are appropriately tailored to address the critical needs of its target buyers.
- Customer experience: Almaden’s customer success strategy appears ad hoc compared with competitors that have more formal programs. Gartner was unable to find any customer case studies on its website, customer reviews or reference to Almaden CIQ in client interactions.
- Vertical industry strategy: Almaden does not differentiate its product, marketing or sales strategy based on industry verticals. This may limit its ability to be successful within markets that have specialized regulatory or security requirements.
- Geographic strategy: Almaden is smaller than most of its competitors in this market, which makes scaling into other geographies challenging. The platform has not yet earned any major cybersecurity certifications. Multinationals and other clients in regulated verticals or with geographic data residency regulations may not be able to comply with those requirements without augmentation.
ControlUp
ControlUp is a Leader in this Magic Quadrant. The ControlUp DEX Platform is sold primarily as a SaaS offering, hosted in Microsoft Azure. ControlUp’s operations are U.S.- and Israel-based. The company focuses on midmarket and enterprise customers, primarily in the Americas and Europe. ControlUp is a venture-backed, privately held company.
OS support includes Windows, macOS, Linux and most thin clients. ControlUp offers DEX management for all major virtualization environments, applications, as well as Microsoft Teams and Zoom UC. ControlUp also integrates with ServiceNow for ITSM and several endpoint management and security tools. ControlUp provides remediations and customers can create their own using low-code workflow orchestration.
- Product strategy: ControlUp has expanded significantly from its historical strength in improving the virtualization experience to include more robust endpoint device, application, UC and security experience capabilities. It also includes native remote control for PCs and boasts one of the shortest data capture intervals — three seconds.
- Business model: ControlUp’s business is scalable and adaptable. To accelerate growth, it has raised significant funding, recruited new leadership positions and is actively hiring. The company is also building a broader partner community to scale sales and product capabilities. Its founders remain actively involved in COO and president roles.
- Market understanding: ControlUp demonstrates a clear understanding of the market and differences between traditional, IT-focused buyers and future, human-centric buyers. Its updated value proposition and messaging are clear and appeal to customers across size, geography, vertical industry and maturity level.
- Marketing execution: Historically, ControlUp’s product marketing has been focused on product features and general updates, lacking much thought leadership. ControlUp ranked in the bottom half of Gartner’s customer interest index (CII), which includes brand awareness metrics.
- Vertical industry strategy: Although ControlUp has customers in all defined vertical industries, traditionally it has not differentiated product or sales strategy based on industry verticals. This is an area of focus going forward, but until done, it may limit the vendor’s growth in verticals with special regulatory or security requirements.
- Sales execution: Customers have predominantly bought ControlUp to manage DEX for virtualization, rather than the overall platform. Many Gartner clients looking for a DEX tool already use ControlUp for virtualization experience and are not aware of its broader solution. This highlights a gap between sales, marketing, account management and customer success.
Flexxible
Flexxible is a Niche Player in this Magic Quadrant. Its FlexxClient is available as a SaaS offering, hosted in Microsoft Azure. Flexxible’s operations span Spain, the U.K., the U.S., Brazil and India. The company focuses on midmarket and enterprise customers in the Americas and Europe. Flexxible is founder owned and led.
OS support includes Windows, Android, Linux and ChromeOS. DEX management is included for all major virtualization environments, but is not offered for applications or UC. ITSM integration is available for ServiceNow, as are integrations with endpoint security tools. Flexxible provides remediations and customers can code their own.
- Geographic strategy: Flexxible has employees and support centers in all regions where it has customers. It demonstrates the awareness required to tailor its product, marketing, sales and customer engagement strategies by geography. Being hosted in Microsoft Azure offers broad geographic coverage as well.
- Product and product strategy: Flexxible provides automation and management of the workspace experience, where a workspace can be a laptop, desktop or virtual desktop hosted anywhere. Its latest release includes improvements to DEX, software asset management (SAM), support, compliance and green IT reporting, alerting and automation.
- Innovation: Flexxible is pushing the boundaries of DEX with a rapid biweekly release cycle. Its innovation focus is on maximizing IT operational efficiency through automation, simplifying security and compliance, enabling agile workspace change management, and customization of reports, dashboards and workflows based on customer needs.
- Marketing execution: Flexxible has little brand awareness in the DEX tools market. It ranked at the bottom of Gartner’s customer interest index (CII), was not mentioned by vendors in this report as a top competitor, and was absent in customer reviews on Gartner Peer Insights and similar sources.
- Sales execution: Flexxible does not publicly provide pricing data, yet its pricing appears to be higher than comparable DEX tools. Discounts scale algorithmically based on volume, so it’s not possible to determine a forecast or budgetary cost without requesting a quote.
- Customer experience: Flexxible’s roadmap is not published or disclosed, which complicates assessing if and how it aligns with customer needs and also decreases an organization’s ability to plan. Analysis also found no evidence of DEX-related customer case studies, and no Gartner client has yet asked about FlexxClient as a DEX tool.
HCLSoftware
HCLSoftware is a Niche Player in this Magic Quadrant. HCL BigFix Workspace is sold primarily as an on-premises or cloud-hosted offering. HCL BigFix Workspace+ includes the AI-powered AEX module. HCLSoftware is a division of publicly traded HCLTech. Its operations and enterprise customers are globally distributed.
DEX capabilities are limited to Windows and macOS devices operating in a HCL BigFix version 11 or higher environment. ITSM integration with ServiceNow is available, as are integrations with endpoint management and security tools. HCLSoftware does not provide DEX management of virtualization environments, applications or UC. HCL BigFix provides a library of Fixlet remediations, and allows customers to build and share their own.
- Sales strategy: DEX capabilities are included at no cost for customers that have active maintenance or subscription licensing to HCL BigFix Workspace. After upgrading to HCL BigFix 11, customers will see some new options. Those looking for the AI-enhanced capabilities of HCL BigFix AEX will need to upgrade to the HCL BigFix Workspace+ license.
- Operations: HCLSoftware is profitable and its operations are highly scalable. It also has a large network of over 900 technology integration, manufacturer, reseller and systems integrator partners to help scale. It leans on its large community of certified BigFix professionals for peer support, product awareness and execution.
- Geographic strategy: HCLSoftware has staff in all geographic regions except China, and partners to fill gaps in supporting its globally distributed customer base. DEX capabilities are built on the HCL BigFix platform, which has a proven ability to enable global customers to manage endpoints, servers, applications and containers. HCLSoftware’s customer support services are globally distributed and centrally managed.
- Market understanding: HCL BigFix Workspace is late to market with basic capabilities that extend endpoint and device management. It has demonstrated little differentiation from competitor offerings and lacks an integrated product set for DEX use cases. Functionality is skewed toward operations with a focus on technology analytics. This aligns to lower-maturity IT organizations that have not yet fully embraced human-centric DEX strategies.
- Marketing execution: HCLSoftware is relatively new to the DEX tools market. The company was not mentioned by vendors in this report as a top competitor and is rarely mentioned by Gartner clients on calls related to DEX tools.
- Market responsiveness: DEX capabilities in HCL BigFix were introduced in mid-2023 and remain less mature than competitors’ products. HCLSoftware does not yet have a turnkey SaaS offering that most Gartner clients are looking for. General performance in the Critical Capabilities research rated in the lower half for all defined use cases.
HP Inc.
HP Inc. is a Visionary in this Magic Quadrant. Its HP Proactive Insights is sold as a SaaS offering, hosted in Amazon Web Services. Its operations and enterprise customers are globally distributed. HP Inc. is a public company.
OS support includes Windows, macOS and Android. iOS, iPadOS and ChromeOS data is imported from third-party endpoint management tool integrations. Proactive Insights integrates with ServiceNow for ITSM. HP Inc. does not offer DEX management for virtualization, application or UC; nor does it offer a library of remediations or low/no-code workflow orchestration. In March 2024, HP Inc. announced that Proactive Insights would be replaced by the HP Workforce Experience Platform in late 2024.
- Overall viability: After its March 2024 announcement, HP Inc. assigned several hundred people to develop the successor to Proactive Insights. It also hired new executive leadership but has maintained continuity within product management. HP Inc. also boasts a large and strong partner network that includes technology integration, hardware manufacturers, resellers, systems integrators and some DEX tool competition.
- Geographic strategy: HP Inc. has staff in all geographic regions, in addition to partners that can help fill gaps in supporting the vendor’s globally distributed customer base. The company has a proven track record of success in the global marketplace and demonstrates a deep awareness of geographic regional differences by tailoring its DEX tool’s product, sales, customer and marketing strategies accordingly.
- Operations: HP Inc. is profitable and highly scalable. It is building the new platform and has partners, service providers and IT organizations testing, while more are signed up to participate in the next testing phase.
- Product: Proactive Insights is significantly less mature than competing DEX tools in overall features and integrations. If HP Inc. can deliver the new capabilities, it should be in a better position to directly compete in the market.
- Marketing execution: Proactive Insights is not very well known in the DEX tools market outside of HP Inc. device-as-a-service customers. The product’s capabilities and release notes are difficult to find on the company website. Messaging improvements are needed to address a common misconception that Proactive Insights and its forthcoming successor only support HP Inc. devices.
- Vertical industry strategy: Although HP Inc. has a long history of vertical industry solutions, it does not differentiate its product, marketing or sales strategy based on industry verticals. This may limit its ability to be successful within markets that have specialized regulatory or security requirements.
Ivanti
Ivanti is a Visionary in this Magic Quadrant. Ivanti Neurons for Digital Experience is sold as a SaaS offering, hosted in Microsoft Azure. Ivanti’s operations and midmarket to enterprise customers are globally distributed. Ivanti is private equity owned.
OS support includes Windows, macOS and Linux. Mobile OS data is imported from its own and third-party endpoint management tools. Ivanti provides integration with its own ITSM and with ServiceNow. Ivanti offers DEX management for applications, UC via integration with Catchpoint, and virtualization is limited to agents installed on virtual desktops. Ivanti also provides a library of remediations and customers can create their own using low/no-code workflow orchestration.
- Innovation: All of Ivanti’s Neurons offerings use AI/ML to drive intelligence and automation across a broader platform of endpoint discovery, management and security, IT and enterprise service, and asset management data and capabilities. The Neurons platform continues to evolve to address buyer needs and expand into adjacent spaces like risk management and spend intelligence.
- Geographic strategy: Ivanti has staff in all geographic regions, in addition to partners that support the vendor’s globally distributed customer base. The company tailors its DEX tool’s product, sales, customer and marketing accordingly. Microsoft Azure, which hosts the solution, also provides broad geographic coverage.
- Market understanding: Ivanti brings a unique perspective to the market by converging DEX with IT and enterprise service management, as well as endpoint discovery, management and security. The vendor’s bot framework is also unique. Ivanti has a solid understanding of DEX tools’ market positioning, opportunities and challenges.
- Sales execution: Ivanti has a smaller market share than its competition, in terms of actively deployed DEX endpoints and annual growth rate. Its licensing fees do not include additional items like training, implementation, customer success and premium support that can be found in the pricing of some competitors. Ivanti is rarely mentioned by vendors in this report as a top DEX competitor or by Gartner clients during inquiry.
- Customer experience: Analysis revealed little evidence of DEX-related customer case studies, limited customer reviews on Gartner Peer Insights and similar sources, and little awareness of Ivanti’s DEX tool offering beyond current Neurons customers. Gartner clients who choose alternatives often cite concerns about Ivanti’s (non-DEX-related) security incidents or complex licensing.
- Vertical industry strategy: Although Ivanti has customers in at least half of the defined vertical industries, it does not differentiate its product, marketing or sales strategy based on industry verticals. This may limit its ability to be successful within markets that have specialized regulatory or security requirements.
Lakeside Software
Lakeside Software is a Leader in this Magic Quadrant. SysTrack is sold primarily as a SaaS offering, hosted in Microsoft Azure. Lakeside’s operations are primarily U.S.-based, with staff in Europe and APAC. The vendor focuses on global, enterprise customers. Lakeside is private equity owned.
OS support includes Windows, macOS, Linux, ChromeOS, Android, iOS, iPadOS and thin clients. SysTrack integrates with several chatbots, ServiceNow for ITSM, Qualtrics for experience management and Splunk for observability. Lakeside offers DEX management for all major virtualization environments, applications and Microsoft Teams UC. The vendor provides a library of remediations and customers can create their own using no/low-code workflow orchestration.
- Market responsiveness: Lakeside is one of the longest-tenured vendors assessed in this market. SysTrack’s value proposition of providing IT insights and enabling proactive problem resolution is aligned to target buyers. The centerpiece of the company’s development, marketing and sales is the volume and frequency of data collected.
- Operations: Lakeside is profitable and demonstrates consistent growth. Its founder is still involved for consistency, and new executives are driving growth and scale. Lakeside has also assembled an extensive partner ecosystem.
- Sales strategy: Licensing is simple to understand. Pricing for SysTrack, which is not publicly disclosed, is lower than many of its competitors’ DEX tools. The vendor’s sales channel strategy is more balanced than competitors. New partnerships will likely increase exposure.
- Product: SysTrack’s ease of use remains a common concern cited by clients. GenAI capabilities on the roadmap within the SysTrack Intelligence Package should reduce UI-related friction.
- Marketing strategy: Lakeside’s messaging is not always directly tailored for all DEX buyers. It tends to focus on SysTrack’s capabilities rather than buyer outcomes. Lakeside leverages many marketing channels and events, but messaging can sometimes be confusing.
- Sales execution: Despite sales strategy being a strength, sales execution was a lower-performing evaluation criterion. Lakeside has a smaller installed base than some primary competitors in this Magic Quadrant. The company does not offer an entry-level bundle, which may not fit IT organizations with less mature use cases or those that may struggle to build a business case for a complete DEX implementation.
Liquidware
Liquidware is a Niche Player in this Magic Quadrant. Its Stratusphere UX Plus is sold as on-premises or cloud-hosted, with CommandCTRL as SaaS-hosted in Google Cloud. Liquidware’s operations span the U.S., Europe and APAC. The vendor focuses on global, enterprise customers.
OS support includes Windows, macOS, Linux and thin clients. Stratusphere UX lacks turnkey ITSM integration, but integrates with ServiceNow for ITAM, reporting and workflow. Customers can use its API Builder for custom integrations. Liquidware provides DEX management for all major virtualization environments, but application and UC experience are limited to those locally installed on PCs. The company offers a library of remediations, but not low/no-code workflow orchestration.
- Vertical industry strategy: Liquidware’s vertical strategy is demonstrated by a distinct go-to-market and web presence for several verticals that are not addressed by competitors. The company emphasizes healthcare, pharmaceuticals, government, education and financial services in its marketing, and has customers in many of the major vertical industries.
- Customer experience: Liquidware has received positive customer reviews for its high-touch, highly technical support services. Customers also like that added capabilities extend beyond virtualization optimization and endpoint management into DEX.
- Overall viability: Liquidware is a profitable, private, founder owned and led company, which some customers see as more sustainable than private equity. DEX and digital experience monitoring (DEM) account for the majority of Liquidware’s revenue, which signifies the market’s strategic importance to the company. Liquidware also demonstrates a solid annual growth rate.
- Market understanding: Liquidware’s DEX tool was born out of, and is still primarily focused on, monitoring and managing virtual and physical endpoints. With new capabilities added in early 2024, Stratusphere UX is a new entrant to the DEX market and is less mature than other DEX tools. The new features extend beyond strong monitoring capabilities, with sentiment and automation to help its primary buyers.
- Product strategy: Stratusphere UX is missing core product functionality such as DEX management for UC and applications, low/no-code workflow orchestration and common integrations. Resources and time will be required to execute the roadmap and fulfill the product’s value proposition. Liquidware’s semiannual release cadence may be perceived as a negative when compared with competitors’ more frequent releases. Optional updates are provided as needed for specific customers or use cases.
- Business model: Despite an outsized contribution to revenue, Liquidware has fewer people working on its DEX tool than most competitors. The company may not have the capacity to address product gaps and may be less prepared to navigate future disruptions.
Nanoheal
Nanoheal is a Niche Player in this Magic Quadrant. Nanoheal is sold as an on-premises or SaaS offering, hosted in Amazon Web Services. Its operations are based primarily in the U.S and India. The vendor focuses on selling to managed service providers (MSPs), global systems integrators (SIs) and resellers, and through these buyers to global enterprise customers.
OS support includes Windows, macOS, Linux, mobile OS and Google ChromeOS. Nanoheal offers ServiceNow ITSM integration. The company lacks turnkey DEX management for UC. DEX management for application and virtualization environments are available but limited. Nanoheal provides remediations and enables customers to create their own using low-code workflow orchestration.
- Sales strategy: Nanoheal’s packaging for MSPs and IT organizations is simple to understand, with one SKU and a few add-ons. Its pricing is not publicly disclosed but is lower than other DEX tools.
- Market responsiveness: Nanoheal remains focused on improving DEX and optimizing endpoint engineering through no-code automation. This is what its primary buyers (MSPs and global SIs) are seeking in order to improve the scale of their service offerings. The company’s roadmap addresses common customer requests to integrate GenAI and ESG reporting tools, and to add support for nontraditional endpoint devices such as workplace IoT.
- Overall viability: Nanoheal is profitable and reports consistent annual growth. The organization is smaller than many competitors, enabling it to be more responsive to customer and partner needs.
- Marketing strategy: Nanoheal does not prioritize marketing to end-user customers. Its primary go-to-market routes are through MSPs, global SIs and other partners. The vendor’s marketing strategy is limited to attending other vendors’ conferences, occasionally hosting webinars and user groups, and distributing newsletters to customers and partners.
- Marketing execution: Nanoheal has built little brand awareness in the DEX tools market. It is rarely mentioned by vendors in this report as a top competitor, or by Gartner clients during inquiry, and was absent in customer reviews. It has little content on its website, and all video channels and social media accounts are inactive. Nanoheal did not execute any major marketing campaigns in the last year.
- Sales execution: Despite sales strategy being a strength, sales execution is one of Nanoheal’s lower-scoring evaluation criteria. It has less market share and a smaller installed base than most other DEX tool vendors, and reports below-average growth rates. While Nanoheal’s sales strategy may require less overhead and be easier to administer, it is proving ineffective in competing in the market.
Nexthink
Nexthink is a Leader in this Magic Quadrant. Nexthink Infinity is sold as a SaaS offering, hosted in Amazon Web Services. Nexthink’s operations are based primarily in the U.S and Switzerland. The vendor focuses on global, enterprise customers. Nexthink is founder led and privately owned.
OS support includes Windows, macOS and IGEL thin clients. Nexthink provides DEX management for all major virtualization environments, applications, and Microsoft Teams and Zoom UC. Nexthink Amplify integrates with ITSM and ITAM tools. Nexthink also integrates with several chatbots, Qualtrics for experience management, and Splunk and other observability tools. The vendor provides remediations and enables self-created remediations using Nexthink Flow.
- Product: The Infinity platform is highly extensible and scalable. It can support over 1 million endpoints per customer and offers data residency wherever Amazon has data centers. Nexthink has averaged two new modules and several direct partner integrations per year in recent years, while also releasing new capabilities, Library items and Flow connectors with each monthly release.
- Marketing execution: Nexthink ranked in the top half of Gartner’s customer interest index (CII) and attracts the most Gartner client and competitive mentions. Nexthink leverages many marketing channels to reach customers, prospects and partners. It demonstrates thought leadership with its DEX Show podcast, DEX Hub website, Experience Everywhere conferences and published books.
- Market understanding: Nexthink was one of the first to market with a DEX tool, and to develop turnkey integrations with ServiceNow, Qualtrics, Moveworks and other partners to extend that platform. Its acquisition of AppLearn demonstrates its vision to extend DEX improvements beyond application experience and into the digital adoption platform (DAP) market.
- Product strategy: Nexthink has less endpoint diversity than some competitors, focusing primarily on Windows and macOS. Mobile device support is limited to basic device inventory ingested from the Collaboration Experience product. Clients also perceive Nexthink’s virtualization experience capabilities to be less mature than some competitors.
- Sales strategy: Nexthink’s complete bundle costs more than most other DEX tools. Customers report having difficulty understanding the vendor’s complex a la carte options. Nexthink does not offer lower-cost, entry point packages. It sells primarily to enterprise organizations, so customers with under 5,000 endpoints usually have to go through resellers or partners.
- Vertical industry strategy: Nexthink has limited differentiation of its product, marketing or sales strategy based on industry verticals. This may limit its ability to be successful within markets that have specialized regulatory or security requirements.
Omnissa
Omnissa is a Visionary in this Magic Quadrant. Its Workspace ONE Experience Management is sold as a SaaS offering hosted in Amazon Web Services. Omnissa’s operations and customers are globally distributed. Omnissa is VMware’s former EUC division, which is now a stand-alone company owned by private equity firm KKR.
OS support includes Windows, macOS, Linux, thin clients, ChromeOS, iOS/iPadOS, Android and some IoT. Omnissa offers DEX management for all major virtualization environments and applications, as well as Microsoft Teams, Slack and Zoom UC. The platform integrates with ServiceNow and TOPdesk ITSM. Omnissa provides remediations and enables customers to create their own using Freestyle Orchestrator.
- Innovation: Omnissa was one of the first unified endpoint management (UEM) vendors to enter the DEX market by extending Workspace ONE Intelligence and adding Freestyle Orchestrator. The company is developing advanced capabilities for frontline worker and mobile use cases, its Horizon virtualization platform and sustainability reporting. It is also focused on delivering an autonomous future for UEM and DEX.
- Product: Omnissa Workspace ONE Experience Management integrates seamlessly with the company’s UEM, Access, Assist and Freestyle Orchestrator products. It covers all major operating systems, is highly extensible and is built on a scalable microservices architecture that supports over 1 million devices within a customer environment.
- Geographic strategy: Omnissa has a globally distributed staff and partners in all regions where it has major customers. Its platform can scale globally, to wherever Amazon has data centers. This includes local data residency. The company tailors its go-to-market strategy by region for all of its products.
- Customer experience: The period from the announced acquisition of VMware by Broadcom through to the recent sale to private equity firm KKR has seen an increase in Gartner client concerns and uncertainty. These concerns have focused on turnover of assigned account management and customer success resources, and general sentiment around reduced support responsiveness and experience.
- Sales execution: Compared with competitors, Omnissa has a smaller-than-average installed base and is the only vendor not to report growth in the last year. Gartner attributes the decline primarily to a misconception that Workspace ONE Experience Management works only on Workspace ONE UEM-managed devices and instability caused by ownership changes.
- Overall viability: Omnissa’s DEX tool is not a significant contributor to overall revenue and is third in priority behind its UEM and virtualization products. Broad changes made by Broadcom cost Omnissa some customers and partners. Omnissa leadership has communicated a plan to rebuild and establish new partner relationships, but that will require time and patience from customers.
Progressive Infotech
Progressive Infotech is a Niche Player in this Magic Quadrant. Its Workelevate platform is sold as a SaaS offering, hosted in Microsoft Azure, on-premises or cloud hosted. Its operations are based in India. The company targets midmarket to enterprise customers and is founder owned and led.
OS support includes Windows and macOS. Workelevate offers DEX management for Citrix and Microsoft virtualization environments, but not for applications or UC. Workelevate integrates with many ITSM, UEM and observability tools. It provides remediations and enables customers to code their own, but does not have a low/no-code orchestration. Workelevate is in the process of being spun out as a separate company.
- Innovation: Workelevate leverages AI/ML for predictive analytics, sentiment analysis, anomaly detection and automated remediation. The vendor uses GenAI for its chatbot, which uses a custom-built large language model (LLM) and can integrate with other LLMs. Innovative roadmap items include capabilities to enhance employee engagement and well-being to improve retention, improving persona management and support for sustainability reporting.
- Vertical industry strategy: Workelevate’s product, marketing and customer strategies are tailored to many vertical industries. It provides regulated industries with on-premises deployment to meet compliance and data security requirements. Customers with large frontline workforces can leverage SaaS offerings that integrate with workstream collaboration and communication tools and help automate on/offboarding tasks.
- Market responsiveness: Multiple features have been added to Workelevate in response to evolving customer needs. Workelevate is highly extensible with many integrations to other IT tools, such as remote control, patching and asset management.
- Marketing execution: Workelevate has little brand awareness in the DEX tools market. It ranked near the bottom of Gartner’s customer interest index (CII) and was not mentioned by vendors in this report as a top competitor. DEX-related content on its website is starting to emerge, but it is more educational than thought leading.
- Sales execution: Workelevate has the smallest market share among vendor products evaluated, but is growing. Sales are made primarily through resellers and partners. Direct sales are focused on midmarket to enterprise customers in India and surrounding regions.
- Operations: Workelevate’s DEX capabilities contribute very little to the company’s bottom line. This is likely due the inadequate marketing and sales execution, in addition to Progressive Infotech assigning fewer resources to work on the product than most competitors. The majority of its customers are operating on-premises-hosted solutions, which increases support and life cycle management efforts.
Riverbed
Riverbed is a Leader in this Magic Quadrant. Riverbed Aternity is sold primarily as a SaaS offering, hosted in Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure. Its operations and customers are globally distributed. Riverbed is private equity owned.
OS support includes Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, iPadOS, Android and IoT. Riverbed offers DEX management for Citrix, Microsoft and Amazon virtualization environments, applications, and Microsoft Teams, Zoom and Webex UC. Aternity directly integrates with ServiceNow for ITSM, Intel’s Endpoint Management Assistant (EMA), and via webhooks to UEM and observability tools. Riverbed provides a library of remediations, and customers can create no-code remediations and runbooks using Intelligent Service Desk.
- Geographic strategy: Riverbed tailors its go-to-market strategy to geographic regions. It handles larger enterprise customers in North America, Europe and APAC directly; partners cover other regions and global midmarket customers. European messaging emphasizes sustainability initiatives and compliance with government-mandated ESG reporting. Riverbed allows customers to choose data residency locations at no additional cost.
- Innovation: Riverbed offers AI-driven, unified observability across endpoint devices, apps, infrastructure and connectivity. Its Aternity Mobile extends the platform to support mobile devices. Riverbed’s Intel partnership provides hardware-level device performance data and deep remediation capabilities.
- Vertical industry strategy: Riverbed tailors product, marketing and customer strategies for many vertical industries. Some regulated industries may obtain special approval for on-premises deployments to meet compliance and data security requirements. Verticals with frontline workforces can use Aternity Mobile for rugged and mobile device experience and Intelligent Service Desk to automate on/offboarding tasks.
- Sales execution: Riverbed’s list pricing, which is not publicly disclosed, is more expensive on average than most other DEX tool vendors. The use of Aternity among Gartner clients has traditionally been focused on monitoring use cases, but DEX is emerging as capabilities improve.
- Overall viability: Aternity’s spinoff, reintegration into Riverbed, Chapter 11 recapitalization, workforce reduction and acquisition by private equity between 2020 and 2023 sparked Gartner client concerns about Riverbed’s stability. The company has since returned to profitability and new leadership is executing its new strategy.
- Marketing execution: Gartner clients sometimes find Riverbed’s messaging confusing as it addresses product capabilities that span several adjacent markets, covers a variety of use cases, and targets existing customers and prospects at varying maturity levels.
Tanium
Tanium is a Visionary in this Magic Quadrant. Tanium DEX is part of the company’s XEM platform, which is sold as an on-premises or SaaS offering, hosted in Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure or Oracle Cloud. Tanium’s operations and enterprise customers are globally distributed. Tanium is a private company.
DEX capabilities are fully supported on Windows and partially supported on macOS. Direct integration is available for ServiceNow ITSM and ITAM. The company does not provide DEX management for virtualization, mobile devices or UC. Application experience is limited to those installed on PCs. Tanium provides remediations and enables customers to create their own.
- Vertical industry strategy: Tanium has customers and go-to-market strategies in nearly all vertical industries. The company’s large partner network adapts to address specific market requirements and regulations. Tanium participates in vertical industry conferences and events, and collaborates with administrative bodies and government agencies.
- Market understanding: Tanium is building the capability to support the predicted convergence of UEM and DEX into autonomous endpoint management (AEM). It is also working to address the risks of GenAI while exploiting the benefits. Most items on the company’s roadmap are customer requested, which demonstrates a pragmatic approach of not chasing the competition.
- Marketing strategy: Tanium broadly leverages all marketing channels, including an active blog, social media, podcast and video channels. Tanium also hosts its own annual Converge conference and regional roadshows. These are backed by messaging that addresses what its primary buyers are seeking today and will need in the near future.
- Product: Tanium DEX is one of the newer and less mature DEX tools in this research. Current capabilities address the needs of IT operations and security buyers who are just starting their DEX journey.
- Sales execution: Tanium DEX has a lower annual growth rate than competitors. Tanium reported an above-average installed base, but Gartner was unable to confirm whether it includes all necessary modules for DEX (Core, Performance, Investigate and Engage). Tanium’s small and midmarket customer sales utilizes resellers and partners, which may not offer the same high-touch service that Tanium’s enterprise customers expect.
- Marketing execution: While Tanium is making progress, buyers are less aware of Tanium DEX than of other vendors’ DEX tools. The vendor ranked in the bottom half in Gartner’s customer interest index (CII) and attracted limited mentions by vendors in this report as a top competitor. DEX-related marketing execution has been focused primarily on product features and general awareness, with little thought leadership.
Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria
The inclusion criteria represent the specific attributes that analysts believe are necessary for vendors to have to be in this Magic Quadrant. To qualify for inclusion, vendors must provide a solution that satisfies the following technical criteria.
- A generally available, single license SKU as of 31 October 2023 that includes all must-have capabilities defined in the market definition and the following before the research cut-off date on 30 April 2024:
- Device, OS and application data collection from an endpoint agent (not a browser extension or server-based agent).
- Employee sentiment surveys.
- Measure and report a DEX or related health score on a device or person basis.
- Analyze data and generate insights on actions to take to improve DEX.
- Act on insights using vendor-provided or customer-developed scripts, self-healing automations and workflows.
- Send outbound employee engagement nudges or campaigns.
- Ingestion of organizational context data via integration defined in the must-have criteria (human resources system or directory services).
- Integrate with IT service management (ITSM) platforms to improve support and self-service.
- Ingestion of data from other tools using vendor-provided or customer-developed integrations using APIs.
- The DEX tool must be purchasable as a stand-alone product and must not solely be sold or licensed as an add-on to another product.
- Core DEX tool capabilities (see 1a through 1e above) must be the vendor’s own intellectual property and not dependent on third-party functionality, partnerships or a white labeled product.
- Rank among the top 20 organizations in the customer interest index (CII) defined by Gartner for this Magic Quadrant. Data inputs used to calculate the DEX CII include a balanced set of measures, including but not limited to:
- Gartner customer search, inquiry volume and trend data.
- Frequency of mentions as a competitor to other DEX tool vendors within reviews on Gartner’s Peer Insights forum between May 2023 and April 2024.
- Customer interest and engagement as represented by various social media engagement measurements.
Honorable Mentions
- Microsoft: Microsoft’s Intune Endpoint Analytics and Advanced Analytics are often referenced by Gartner clients, asking how they compare with DEX tools. Endpoint Analytics is included in all Intune licenses. Advanced Analytics is licensed as an add-on or in the Intune Suite. Microsoft did not meet the inclusion criteria for collection of employee sentiment or ability to send outbound communications to employees, and self-healing with Intune Remediations (formerly Proactive Remediations) is limited in breadth and depth. Both products are limited to Windows devices.
- ServiceNow: ServiceNow’s Digital End-User Experience (DEX) was initially launched as a preview in May 2023 and became generally available in May 2024. ServiceNow DEX currently supports application and device experience across Windows and macOS devices and provides a desktop assistant for employee engagement. ServiceNow did not meet the inclusion criteria for calculating and displaying a DEX or health score, and offering a predefined library of scripts and self-healing automations. These are on the vendor’s near-term roadmap.
Evaluation Criteria
Gartner evaluates vendors on their Ability to Execute and their Completeness of Vision, as per the definitions below. When the two sets of criteria are evaluated together, the resulting analysis provides a view of how well a provider performs compared with its peers, and how well it is positioned for the future.
For more information on Gartner’s Magic Quadrant research methodology, refer to our Research Methodologies on the Gartner website.
Ability to Execute
Gartner analysts evaluate vendors on the quality and efficacy of their DEX tool; their ability to be competitive, efficient and effective; and to positively impact revenue, retention and reputation. Ultimately, vendors are judged on their ability to deliver on their vision.
General evaluation criteria is available at the bottom of this research. For this market, assessments were primarily based on:
- Product: Tool extensibility; support for standard, must-have and optional capabilities; and the vendor’s track record of delivering on its roadmap. The overall breadth of capabilities and the depth of product functionality are other important factors.
- Overall Viability: Sustainability of investment/ownership structure, profitability, leadership stability, organizational and partner scalability, and year-over-year product revenue growth.
- Sales Execution: Clarity and competitiveness of the vendor’s packaging and pricing model, sustainability of new business growth and ability to replace competitors.
- Market Responsiveness: Tenure in the market, product vision, value proposition and quality of the vendor’s roadmap.
- Marketing Execution: Use of various channels and creation of thought-leading content, as well as overall market awareness of the vendor’s DEX tool.
- Customer Experience: General customer feedback, availability of customer success services and related case studies.
- Operations: Size and scalability of the organization, partners and platform.
Table 1: Ability to Execute Evaluation Criteria
| Evaluation Criteria | Weighting |
|---|---|
|
Product or Service |
High |
|
Overall Viability |
High |
|
Sales Execution/Pricing |
Medium |
|
Market Responsiveness/Record |
Medium |
|
Marketing Execution |
Medium |
|
Customer Experience |
High |
|
Operations |
Medium |
Completeness of Vision
Gartner analysts evaluate vendors on their ability to understand current market opportunities and create and articulate their vision for future market direction, innovation, customer requirements and competitive forces. Ultimately, vendors are rated on their vision for the future, and how well that maps to Gartner’s position.
General evaluation criteria is available at the bottom of this research. For this market, assessments were primarily based on:
- Market Understanding: Unique value to the market, understanding of external market forces and alignment with customer objectives and use cases.
- Marketing Strategy: Overall ability to communicate a unique value proposition, effectively use various marketing channels and address needs of target buyer personas.
- Sales Strategy: Pricing and bundling, sales channels and sales partnership strategies.
- Product Strategy: Vision to deliver expanded capabilities and a consistent product release cadence, as well as their ability to ensure that their roadmap addresses common customer needs and use cases.
- Business Model: Business, value proposition and unique capabilities (for example, patents, people, technology and data).
- Vertical Industry Strategy: Most common industries among customers, specific target industries and compliance with common industry regulations or certifications.
- Innovation: Level of investment in product development in new areas related or adjacent to DEX, third-party and partner relationships and integrations, and use of AI/ML and other novel capabilities.
- Geographic Strategy: The number of employees allocated to different regions, tailoring of go-to-market or product strategy to address regional differences, and the depth and scope of partners available in countries with existing and new customers.
Table 2: Completeness of Vision Evaluation Criteria
| Evaluation Criteria | Weighting |
|---|---|
Market Understanding | High |
Marketing Strategy | Medium |
Sales Strategy | High |
Offering (Product) Strategy | High |
Business Model | High |
Vertical/Industry Strategy | Low |
Innovation | Medium |
Geographic Strategy | Low |
Quadrant Descriptions
Leaders
Leaders exhibit strong execution and vision scores and exemplify the functionality required for IT organizations to continuously evaluate and improve DEX. Leaders have the broadest set of capabilities, strongest roadmaps, a larger installed base and cover the most geographic regions and industries.
Challengers
Challengers exhibit a strong set of technologies, marketing and sales execution, and intellectual property — as also exhibited by Leaders — but do not have the requisite strategic support, vision, innovation or roadmap to compete in the Leaders quadrant. Many Challengers tailor solutions to specific market segments or use cases.
Visionaries
Visionaries exhibit strong strategic support, vision, innovation and a robust roadmap, but have not yet amassed the requisite size, installed base, platform breadth or integration points to compete in the Leaders quadrant.
Niche Players
Niche Players exhibit consistent ability to address specific use cases, geographic regions, market segments or verticals. Their offerings, however, fail to provide a breadth of features and cannot scale to be relevant to all buyers.
Context
The goal of any Magic Quadrant is to provide a level view of comparable vendors (size, capability and corporate structure) and their products’ ability to address the demands of a wide variety of buyers. Not every company’s requirements are identical. We encourage clients to review the accompanying Critical Capabilities research to review use case and functionality requirements, and this Magic Quadrant research to align industry expertise, vision, technology and cost requirements to the right vendor, regardless of the vendor’s quadrant.
Market Overview
Demand for objective digital employee experience (DEX) measurement and improvement is rising, as organizations recognize its impact on overall employee experience (EX). IT departments face a critical choice: stick to traditional operations and risk entering the commoditization zone, or pivot to enhancing technology value and experience. DEX is the key factor in making this decision and charting the future path.
Analysis of social media conversations reveals that AI-driven insights and real-time analytics from DEX tools can significantly enhance:
- Employee experience: DEX tools proactively identify and resolve issues that impact employee experiences.
- Productivity and engagement: They eliminate digital friction and boost satisfaction, thereby improving retention.
- Persona-based DEX: They use AI to identify digital personas and tailor experiences to their specific needs.
- Real-time visibility: They collect timely data to improve issue identification, remediation and data-driven decisions.
Gartner estimated that the DEX tool market grew over 29% in 2023, reaching $598 million. Gartner forecasts that the market will grow at a compound annual rate of 13.7% through 2027 to a total of $864 million, based on constant currency (see Market Share: IT Operations Management Software, Worldwide, 2023 and Forecast: IT Operations Management Software, Worldwide, 2021-2027). Overall, most DEX tool vendors forecast at least 20% annual growth in annual recurring revenue (ARR).
Over the next year, Gartner predicts the DEX market will be shaped by:
- Investment in worker productivity: Organizations will focus on EX and DEX to reduce digital friction and boost worker productivity.
- Market expansion: New vendors will enter the DEX tools market through mergers, acquisitions and product enhancements, especially from adjacent markets like endpoint management and IT service management (ITSM).
- Enhanced AI/ML: DEX tools will significantly improve anomaly detection, correlation and causation analysis, identification of remediation actions and automated problem resolution.
- Use-case expansion: Requirements will expand to include non-IT-focused, as well as mobile and frontline worker, use cases.
- Adding generative AI: DEX tools will use GenAI to recommend and draft employee-facing campaigns and provide natural language interfaces.
- Sustainability: Expanded functionality for reporting and delivering sustainable IT contributions.
- Rising confidence in automation: Automation will gain traction for eliminating repetitive tasks, with IT departments maintaining control.
This is the first version of the Magic Quadrant for Digital Employee Experience Management Tools. It replaces the Market Guide for DEX Tools.
Evidence
Gartner Peer Insights: We considered reviews for Gartner Peer Insights posted from May 2023 through April 2024 for representative vendors in the DEX tools market.
Customer interest index (CII): Gartner’s CII used for this Magic Quadrant calculates and ranks included vendors using a balanced set of measures that include, but are not limited to:
- Gartner client interaction and Gartner.com search volume and trend data.
- Frequency of mentions as a competitor to other DEX tool vendors within reviews on Gartner’s Peer Insights forum between May 2023 and April 2024.
- Customer interest and engagement as represented by various social media and other platform engagement measurements.
Social media analytics: Gartner conducts social listening analysis leveraging third-party data tools to complement or supplement the other fact bases presented in this document. Due to its qualitative and organic nature, the results should not be used separately from the rest of this research. No conclusions should be drawn from this data alone. Social media data in reference is from 1 January 2021 through 30 April 2024 in all geographies (except China) and recognized languages. Social media analytics study results do not represent “global” findings or the market as a whole, but reflect the aggregate crowdsourced opinion of the respondents commenting about the topic on social media.
Evaluation Criteria Definitions
Ability to Execute
Product/Service: Core goods and services offered by the vendor for the defined market. This includes current product/service capabilities, quality, feature sets, skills and so on, whether offered natively or through OEM agreements/partnerships as defined in the market definition and detailed in the subcriteria.
Overall Viability: Viability includes an assessment of the overall organization’s financial health, the financial and practical success of the business unit, and the likelihood that the individual business unit will continue investing in the product, will continue offering the product and will advance the state of the art within the organization’s portfolio of products.
Sales Execution/Pricing: The vendor’s capabilities in all presales activities and the structure that supports them. This includes deal management, pricing and negotiation, presales support, and the overall effectiveness of the sales channel.
Market Responsiveness/Record: Ability to respond, change direction, be flexible and achieve competitive success as opportunities develop, competitors act, customer needs evolve and market dynamics change. This criterion also considers the vendor’s history of responsiveness.
Marketing Execution: The clarity, quality, creativity and efficacy of programs designed to deliver the organization’s message to influence the market, promote the brand and business, increase awareness of the products, and establish a positive identification with the product/brand and organization in the minds of buyers. This “mind share” can be driven by a combination of publicity, promotional initiatives, thought leadership, word of mouth and sales activities.
Customer Experience: Relationships, products and services/programs that enable clients to be successful with the products evaluated. Specifically, this includes the ways customers receive technical support or account support. This can also include ancillary tools, customer support programs (and the quality thereof), availability of user groups, service-level agreements and so on.
Operations: The ability of the organization to meet its goals and commitments. Factors include the quality of the organizational structure, including skills, experiences, programs, systems and other vehicles that enable the organization to operate effectively and efficiently on an ongoing basis.
Completeness of Vision
Market Understanding: Ability of the vendor to understand buyers’ wants and needs and to translate those into products and services. Vendors that show the highest degree of vision listen to and understand buyers’ wants and needs, and can shape or enhance those with their added vision.
Marketing Strategy: A clear, differentiated set of messages consistently communicated throughout the organization and externalized through the website, advertising, customer programs and positioning statements.
Sales Strategy: The strategy for selling products that uses the appropriate network of direct and indirect sales, marketing, service, and communication affiliates that extend the scope and depth of market reach, skills, expertise, technologies, services and the customer base.
Offering (Product) Strategy: The vendor’s approach to product development and delivery that emphasizes differentiation, functionality, methodology and feature sets as they map to current and future requirements.
Business Model: The soundness and logic of the vendor’s underlying business proposition.
Vertical/Industry Strategy: The vendor’s strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings to meet the specific needs of individual market segments, including vertical markets.
Innovation: Direct, related, complementary and synergistic layouts of resources, expertise or capital for investment, consolidation, defensive or pre-emptive purposes.
Geographic Strategy: The vendor’s strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings to meet the specific needs of geographies outside the “home” or native geography, either directly or through partners, channels and subsidiaries as appropriate for that geography and market.