This week, Gartner published their long awaited, first ever Magic Quadrant for Digital Communications Governance and Archiving (DCGA) Solutions. We’ve written about what DCGA is, but essentially it represents the evolution from the legacy Enterprise Information Archiving (EIA) market, that was built on email and file based archiving, to the the current need to apply capture, archiving, data retention, surveillance, supervision, behavioral analytics, auditing and e-discovery towards Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC) platforms. For Theta Lake, it was great news - as we were named a Visionary.

Gartner defines Magic Quadrant Visionaries as “understanding where the market is going or has a vision for changing rules” and in a newly formed market segment that has been defined by the world’s largest and most popular IT research and advisory services firm, we are both flattered and proud. 

We’re experiencing exciting momentum, and the leadership we’ve exhibited in helping to define this market is being recognized not just by analyst firms, but most importantly, by our industry leading customer base who have continued to make us better and drive our success.

A Future Proof and Durable Visionary

Since our inception in 2017, Theta Lake has been architected and created to provide compliance and security for modern communications like UCC. We have pioneered several key trends that our knowledgeable and market leading customer base has selected us for, including the unified compliance and capture of e-comms, a-comms and v-comms, ready made AI based risk detections built for regulatory, governance, security and privacy requirements, unified search across digital communications regardless of modality and channel type, and overall platform support for today’s market leading UCC platforms including Zoom, Microsoft Teams, RingCentral, Webex by Cisco and Salesforce, many of whom are not only valued partners, but also investors.

At Theta Lake, we’ve created a future-proof and durable approach to DCGA, that begins with addressing an organization’s immediate compliance gaps with support for 100+ communication channels, and maximizes UCC engagement and takes advantage of customer’s existing infrastructure investments by enabling them to bring their own storage and encryption keys.

From communications capture, to compliance search and discovery and following through with supervision and surveillance, Theta Lake has always been designed to do the right things for our customers while blazing a new path and market opportunity. In this sense, Theta Lake has always been a “visionary”, with a small v.

Freeing a New Market of Legacy Perceptions

As a former 2X Gartner analyst that authored and contributed to multiple Magic Quadrants, it's important to recognize what a difficult challenge Gartner had in putting this inaugural Magic Quadrant together. While the DCGA market may be newly defined, it is still permeated by legacy EIA vendors.

These vendors are sometimes recognized for their longevity and market share, but customers in that space have had their data held hostage and their license renewals treated as a recurring annuity by their vendor providers, devoid of positive customer experience or relationship. When it comes to use cases like supervision and surveillance, with promises of AI usage and improved productivity, the end result has too often been poorly defined outcomes, clawed back projects with diminished expectations, and enormous wastes of time and capital. As a result of all of this, DCGA buyers may look at this “new” segment with a healthy degree of skepticism and a “buyer beware” feeling.

What it Means Moving Forward

A key tenant for us is that we’ll continue to innovate. Our product and engineering teams are relentlessly driving innovation and enhancing and expanding our market leading Risk and Compliance Suite. In the last year we’ve made rapid strides around providing guardrails for organizations and their use of Generative AI, created the widest coverage and support for Cloud Voice and developed industry defining capabilities for recordkeeping essentials like reconciliation.

We’ll continue to partner with some of the leading, multinational companies in the globe today, and we’ll continue to expand our reach and support working with our highly skilled and knowledgeable customer success teams. Our arrow is headed up.

Learn More:

• Download the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Communications Governance and Archiving (DCGA) Solutions
• Read our Press Release describing Theta Lake’s Recognition as a Visionary in DCGA
• Read our DCGA Solutions Page for more background on key requirements and Theta Lake’s differentiated approach 
• Register for our Webcast taking place Jan 30th where we’ll examine key insights and actionable steps to embrace DCGA