Is Gartner Magic Quadrant the North Star?

Debunking seven common myths

Getting recognized in the leaders quadrant is an instant game changer for many vendors as a lot of decision makers use MQ leaders quadrant players as the baseline for evaluation.

For decades, Gartner’s Magic Quadrant report built a strong reputation and credibility with the business and technology leaders, as the go-to-tool for supporting decision makers.

As someone who has been on both sides of the reports, I know that the visual representation of technology providers in otherwise complex markets influences deeper than a 90-minute long pitch. So yes, I have seen the pain or pride that vendors feel about inclusion/exclusion from the MQ.

The MQ report helps in getting a visual snapshot of the market and the current standing of the existing providers in the market.

But that's not the full story.

Decision makers should note that it is:

1. Not a silver bullet: Gartner produces Magic Quadrant reports for their own customers, the trends, feedback it hears from its customer case. Gartner MQ is not a judgement report for the entire market as a whole and shouldn’t be considered as the final report.

2. Not exhaustive: Don’t expect the MQ report to include an exhaustive set of vendors in the market. The maximum vendors that an MQ report can include is 20 vendors. There may be a lot more vendors who are relevant and may not be included and shouldn’t be discounted.

3. Credible but not included: Multiple cases where the vendor you are having discussions with is quite credible and has strong capabilities matching your requirements but not included in the MQ. MQ has inclusion criteria in terms of revenue, geographic footprint (pre-dominantly majority in North America), customer interest index among Gartner customers to name a few. Don’t discard the vendor just because it is not in the MQ.

4. Not a Product Performance Evaluation: Contrary to the popular belief of MQ being an evaluation of the product capabilities, it is not. It is a market snapshot of vendors playing in a specific market. The MQ takes into account multiple non-product and non-functional capabilities.

• Financial viability: A vendor is less likely to be on the cutting edge of innovation if they don’t have enough access to money.

• Overall Viability: How likely is the vendor to continue investing into this product in the portfolio in the future, is it core to their business or just an add-on. IBM sold off its QRadar on-prem business to Palo Alto Networks, an example of very low overall viability of IBM’s QRadar or SIEM product.

• Sales Strategy: Licensing model flexible enough to adapt to enterprise needs, presence across geographies, value added services available natively through partners.

• Marketing: How is the vendor reaching out to the market, are they using the right channels to reach their target markets, how effective is their product messaging and positioning, etc.

• Customer experience: How is the overall customer review for the product as well as support along with user experience of the product. Transparency of roadmap, etc.

• Roadmap: is the product roadmap and strategy aligned with the evolving requirements of the market.

5. Don't use MQ alone: MQ alone should not be used for decision making. Did you know there is a lesser popular brother of MQ report, Critical Capabilities report. This report is published after a week or 2 after the MQ publishes and serves as a product evaluation tool based on the 3 Top identified and defined use-cases. It gives a stack ranking of products (not vendors) based on the capabilities. The CC report doesn’t include any marketing or sales or finance aspects.

6. Product selection without POC: Gartner itself never recommends buying or deploying a solution without doing a proof of concept (POC) in the customer's environment. Don’t skip POC for MQ.

7. One size fits all: Organizations assume that the vendors in the leaders quadrant are the best choice, but that may not be valid for every use-case. Gartner also doesn’t recommend deploying only leaders quadrant vendors.

Both MQ and CC reports are dynamic reports, change the weightage of the evaluation criteria, suiting your needs and see the change in positioning of vendors and products.

In the next blog in the #WinAR series, I will talk about how we use MQ, CC, Peer Insights and other 3rd party validation to select a technology across various phases of decision evaluation.

Tell me in the comments, if any of the myths discussed resonate.