We explore the key trends in the Customer Data Platform (CDP) landscape. Plus, we cover The 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Customer Data Platforms.

There’s been a lot of coverage about the CDP landscape this year. Can you talk about what reports have come out and why this year has seen such an increase in coverage of the category?

Specifically, I’ve worked at Tealium for about seven years now and headed up our analyst relations program. It’s been interesting to see all the coverage of the CD P landscape this year. So, IDC has a bunch of market scapes where they cover different types of CDPs and different verticals. Forrester has a B2C CDP wave on their calendar for this year for the first time… And they’ve been doing the B2B CDP wave for a few years now. And of course, this year, the big news was Gartner® finally joined with a 2024 Magic Quadrant™ for Customer Data Platforms.

The Magic Quadrant™ is exciting for me personally. When you think about, being a product marketer and kind of building a category is kind of the coolest thing you could do and you always dream about having a magic quadrant kind of covering the categories. It helps people who are looking at CDPs pick the right one.

You mentioned that Tealium was named a Leader in The 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Customer Data Platforms! What is that and what does that mean? Why do you think Tealium was named a Leader?

I recommend reading the report (available on our website for a complimentary download).

My opinion on why we were positioned well to be named a Leader in 2024 Magic Quadrant™ harkens back to what our vision is and our philosophy for how we manage customer data.

1) Neutrality and Flexibility: We think about ourselves as the Switzerland of data, we work with everybody. We think the ecosystem needs a neutral player who’s not part of a larger collection of tools because that means we can focus on just managing the data for maximum flexibility. At a certain point in time, we called our product suite “The Universal Data Hub”… So you can see our ambition for having mastery across a large number of different types of data.

2) Expertise in Highly Regulated Industries: Whenever you’re working in a regulated industry, there’s a higher standard for control over the data. We bring that expertise to bear for those industries. Our customers gain the advantage of our expertise around having control so that you can do differentiated things using your unique data because that’s going to separate you from the competition.

3) Enterprise Readiness: We put a lot of effort into making our system extremely scalable and reliable. Our Customer Success team is a valuable resource for our customers to get down in the foxhole and solve these customer data challenges which are always unique to every data landscape out there.

Additionally, we have a large partner network that has technology partners, services partners, and systems integrators to surround Tealium’s technology. We’re giving our customers a whole solution, which I think is something that played into our ratings.

CDPs are a hot topic in today’s data landscape as they address several important market forces (AI, data collection/activation, data privacy, and more). What’s happening with CDPs? Are they being touted as a holistic solution to a lot of these topics?

Well, they certainly can’t solve every problem, but it can be part of solving a lot of problems! It’s been an interesting ride since the early days. I’ve been around for most of the ride since the CDP was named as a category around 2013.

For a long time there, there were a lot of doubters. The CDP category was called a passing fad by a major organization. But Tealium’s vision for what we’ve been delivering hasn’t really changed at all. 

If you go back in time, one of the first things our CEO Jeff Lunsford told me was about the five mandates for digital transformation. Those five mandates were:

• Putting The Customer At The Center not only operationally like you hear about from Amazon, putting an empty chair for the customer at board meetings, but also technologically. Your view of the customer should be baked into the center of all of your operations.
• Real-Time Data As A Requirement is one that we’re seeing that amp up these days.
• Data Privacy is important too. When it comes to the above, it means doing it all in a privacy-centric way, and you’re seeing that become more important. Remember, this mandate was before GDPR came out back in 2018. That supercharged global regulations starting in Europe.
• AI and ML Ready means that you manage your data in a way that you’re going to be able to take advantage of… For example, automating the insights from that data, which I think we can all agree is becoming a very important thing in the market today.
• Eliminating Data Silos is part of the idea that data should flow freely through the enterprise. In the early days, a lot of people viewed CDPs as a marketing system. We were a little different! We had the universal vision which we’re seeing play out with more data sources like call centers.

Download your complimentary copy of The 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Customer Data Platforms.

Gartner®, Magic Quadrant for Customer Data, Lizzy Foo Kune, Rachel Smith, Benjamin Bloom, Suzanne White, Adriel Tel, David Walters, February 14, 2024. GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally, and HYPE CYCLE and MAGIC QUADRANT are registered trademarks of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved. 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 or other designation. 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.