Industry Research

Unfortunately, the Magic Quadrant has nearly become a standard in our lingo - which is almost a pre-requisite as level entry pass to discussions with peers, prospects, competitors, press, etc.

Yet, I concur with Doug that new market analysis and assessment approaches are now meeting better the needs of small and large corporations - by offering more pertinent content from knowledge workers using hardware & software products, real-time data from current projects and more detailed/accurate information, which is really what one needs to get their project going and off the ground.

As I have been working for large software and hardware vendors, it appears that customers still demand our positioning in the Magic Quadrant yet, when it comes to real-life implementation, other resources are required.

So, this is not a perfect world but one where there is a need for it all (Gartner's magic quadrant for pre-sales activities and other analysts for pre & post sales activities - including the most important part: implementation!).

Just telling it as I experience it from the Silicon Valley and traveling around the world!
Anyck Turgeon

Doug's comments are right on the money...from the misguided status and weight that is associated with an analyst and his/her opinion to the manner in which those opinons are correlated. I suppose that there was a period of time when these shallow analyses were important, but with technologies that provide (and promote) collection from the masses that actually use these products, one must question the validity of antiques like the "magic quadrant."

In fact, another couple of questions that I would add to Doug's "spot on" list are:

7) What is the historical accuracy of these analysts predictions regarding the products in their space?

8) What is the basis for analyzing post-sales implementations and total cost of ownership?

In addition, I would further qualify Question #2 by asking: What are the details to the dimensions that are analyzed? In other words, how do I know that products are fairly analyzed with consideration to their inherent differences?

Thanks Doug, for sharing your insighful comments.

I too agree with Doug 100%.

One area that is changing for the better is the identification of all vendors. With more vendors providing smart directories, at least the identification of all the vendors by product / service type should be easier.

Information vendors that provide strategically relevant industry information and trends, including a list of all competitors, but without any subjective product analysis, will have no bias or reason not to include all vendors.

IT organizations can then better ask Gartner and other analysts firms why the additional firms were not included in their analysis. Alternatively, the IT organization can at least do some basic research themselves. Smart directories will also help Gartner and others because they will serve as another check for them to make sure they don’t accidentally or unknowingly skip some vendors. (We cover approximately 2,000 non-overlapping IT and business consulting industries, and with global start-ups entering the market all the time, we, like Gartner, will always miss some – but with a good feedback system – the missing usually become the found very quickly.)