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Notes on Analyst Value for Vendors

by Anton Chuvakin on June 5, 2019

Here is another post vaguely related to analyst craft. And it is about a touchy subject – vendor perception of (industry | market | technology) analyst value. As an aside, I’ve always considered myself “a technology analyst” rather than a market one…

Here is what some security vendors think of the value of analyst relationship (let’s just say Gartner relationship here, for simplicity sake):

An opportunity to beg an analyst to move the location of their dot on the Magic Quadrant a bit up and to the right.

Here is what the reality is [and, coincidentally what the enlightened security vendors know to be true]:

Gather aggregated data from enterprise security teams that can be used for vendor’s product planning
See a view of customer problems and how they are using products from different categories and vendors to solve them
Obtain an independent “in the trenches” view of product requirements that they can factor into their pitch and marketing storytelling
Receive analyst advice useful for multi-year roadmap planning based on long-term security architecture projects analysts see running at clients
Get product development and product architecture advice
Conduct comparative technology roadmap discussions focused on serving the needs of the professionals who will operate their product
Procure advice on technical support for product evaluations and POC deployments
Hear unbiased criticism of product capabilities and plans, based on real field studies by customers
Test the messaging and obtain feedback (sometimes harsh, but always useful feedback) on their messaging, from use case descriptions to whitepapers and decks
Learn what advice the analyst gives enterprise clients about this vendor’s tool category (e.g. operational practices, etc)

[this is based on the notes I’ve compiled over the years, and now I suddenly feel like sharing this]

If you find it useful, you can buy me a beer later. Or a Gartner subscription for yourself. Ideally, both