The Great British Bake-Off (also known as The Great British Baking Show in the USA) has been a much-loved fixture on TV since 2010. The Gartner Analytics and BI (ABI) Bake-Off, equally loved by attendees at the Gartner Data and Analytics summit, mirrors the format of the TV show. (For more information on the Analytics and BI Bake-Off, see Gartner’s post on LinkedIn).

In the TV show’s technical challenge round, contestants were told what recipe to bake using provided ingredients. Similarly, in the Analytics and BI (ABI) Bake-Off, Gartner mandated a theme and provided datasets and a demo script that had to be complied within a live software demo.

This year, the ABI Bake-Off shared something additional with the TV production. Applicants for the TV show went through a series of off-screen tests before being selected to appear. In 2025, for the first time, making it to the live ABI Bake-Off was the outcome of a competitive selection process, too. Gartner asked vendors, whose ABI platform ranked in the top 10 (out of 20) in its 2024 Critical Capabilities functional evaluation, to submit demo videos. Again, these had to follow the mandated theme, data and flow. The video demos were evaluated by a panel of Gartner expert analysts on functionality alone, with the three strongest given a place in the live on-stage contest.

Ten were invited, and eight submitted a video in the first round: Domo, Microsoft, Oracle, Pyramid Analytics, Qlik, Salesforce, Strategy (ex. MicroStrategy) and ThoughtSpot. The products winning a place in the Bake-Off final were: Salesforce Tableau, Strategy and Oracle Analytics Cloud (OAC).

How success was judged was very different between the two formats. Unlike in the TV show, where two experts adjudicate in the Gartner ABI Bake-Off, the judging panel was comprised of thousands of audience members who were polled live on which platform they thought performed best immediately after each section. Not only that, but they were canvassed on which ABI platform they prefered before and after seeing the live demos.

In our view, its performance shows that organizations that want a compelling, fully functioned, AI-enabled ABI platform really need to give Oracle Analytics Cloud a look. We believe that based on the Bake-Off, it’s clear that Oracle Analytics is now one of the most compelling analytics and BI platforms available. For the last decade, the ABI market has been prone to brand tribalism, fanboy and girl behaviour and ‘oh well, if it comes with Office’ sourcing. However, when it comes down to it, what people really need is an ABI tool that helps them do their job and make better decisions with data, and that fits into their ecosystem.

If you’re an Oracle customer and you don’t use Oracle Analytics, you really should give it a try. If you’re not an Oracle customer, you should check it out – you’ll no doubt be surprised how well it stacks up against the ABI tools you already use. What do you have to lose? Fortune favours the brave, after all!

Finally, for those of you who want to see exactly what we showed on stage:

  • The theme selected by the Gartner team was How to understand and help societal impacts of AI.
  • Data management – Like all of the vendors, Oracle’s exploration followed the same flow – with data preparation first, here our prebuilt profiling and enrichment was invaluable:
    Section 1: Data Management
Data Management
Data management and enrichment using data flows

 

Analytics, content creation and collaboration
Automated content generation using natural language queries

 

  • Sharing – Continuing on, we demonstrated how our data storytelling capabilities help people share what they find in varied formats, including podcasts, across different devices:
    Section 3: Share Findings
Sharing findings
Sharing information using a QR code

 

  • Innovation – Finally, we showed some of the innovative ways we’re considering that will change how analytics is delivered in future (this is the only section where Gartner allows non-GA functionality to be shown):
    Section 4: Differentiators and Cool Innovations
Differentiators and cool innovations
Ambient AI and AI-assisted storytelling

 

Call to Action

We encourage you to find out more from these resources:

 

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