What is the importance of the Gartner Magic Quadrant?

All of us at some point have heard of digital transformation. This phenomenon affects companies of all verticals and sizes and has been gaining attention in the market. Digital transformation increasingly requires organizational leaders to adapt their organizational strategies to meet new and more demanding business requirements. This includes aspects such as customer experience, agility, and improvement of their business processes.

Thus, meeting these new market demands has become much more than a trend, it is a business imperative. These actions include the implementation of technology solutions in organizations to optimize their operations, reduce costs, and thus deliver the best experience to their clients.

To meet the new requirements arising from the digital transformation process, market suppliers, including IT, have developed solutions to be implemented by companies. With so many options available, it is often difficult for organizational teams to choose the best solutions that meet their needs and can fill the gaps created by these new market requirements.

Gartner is a company recognized for providing impartial, high-quality consulting and research on many markets, as well as providing valuable information and insights to the entire technology community. In addition to being part of the S&P 500, an index of the top 500
publicly traded companies in the United States, Gartner provides research and analysis of solutions in areas such as finances, legal, compliance, and Information Technology.

Through its more than 15,000 employees, Gartner also contributes to determining the IT standards in place and the market trends that will become a reality in the future. Its reach is global, being located in more than 100 countries.

Gartner provides strategic market research and tools for IT leaders to build their strategies and assist in decision-making.

More than 15,000 companies are listed as Gartner clients around the world. To get an idea of its relevance to the market, 73% of the companies that make up the Fortune Global 500 – the annual ranking of the 500 largest companies prepared by Fortune magazine – are Gartner clients and use its services in their business strategies.

If organizational and security leaders do not use the proper tools to choose security solutions such as those offered by Gartner, the organization is subject to not implementing the proper tools to solve its business problems. Or even worse: companies may even implement these solutions and not fully take advantage of all the functionality offered by these technologies.

This is because, in many cases, the chosen solutions may not be in line with their strategy and business needs. By not adapting their operations to the changes required by phenomena such as digital transformation, organizations can suffer from drops in performance, productivity, agility, and effectiveness in the execution of their business strategies.

When this occurs, organizations are subject to greater business and cybersecurity risks. Furthermore, they are subject to not obtaining a greater competitive advantage over their competitors in the market, which can affect their operations’ continuity.

To support their strategy and help organizations of all sizes choose which solutions to deploy in their infrastructure, IT leaders should use tools developed by Gartner, such as the Magic Quadrant reports.

Gartner’s Magic Quadrant uses a uniform set of assessment criteria with results represented in a graphical form showing the competitive positioning of different vendors of digital products and services in different markets. This representation makes it easy to see how these vendors meet different market requirements and work against Gartner’s market view.

Gartner uses a qualitative data analysis methodology to indicate trends in different markets. This analysis includes the direction and maturity of different markets, in addition to their respective players. The analytics developed by Gartner are tailored for specific technology
industries, including PAM, and are updated every one to two years.

The Magic Quadrant for PAM allows you to assess different vendors and their market positioning, as well as their vision and how they perform according to Gartner’s market vision.

This is done through the two axes of the quadrant: one axis representing the vendor’s market awareness, called Completeness of Vision, and the other that reflects the Ability to Execute its market view.

The graph with the two axes is divided into four quadrants, which indicate the capabilities of different vendors with respect to the Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision aspects.

The different quadrants of the Magic Quadrant are: Niche Players, Visionaries, Challengers, and Leaders.
The Magic Quadrant is the first step in understanding what these vendors and their associated technology do. This tool helps you understand visions, strategic roadmaps, and all their ability to operate according to your specific needs.

Speaking specifically about the Privileged Access Management (PAM) market, Gartner has launched the Magic Quadrant report with 14 vendors in 2018. However, each year this number has been decreasing: in 2020, 12 vendors were listed, and the last report, released in July 2021, brought only 10 PAM technology vendors. According to the Gartner analyst, the “air is thinner”, that is, the PAM market is even more competitive than in previous years.

Gartner’s Magic Quadrants are important because they influence the buying decisions of organizations of all sizes and verticals. Large companies often turn to Gartner and its reports to support their strategies and choose which IT vendors they will hire.

By using information from Gartner’s Magic Quadrant report, organizational and security leaders can better understand the dynamics of the different markets covered by Gartner.

Also, those using Gartner-developed reports can quickly obtain information about the different vendors centrally. It is also possible to know the strengths and weaknesses of the solutions assessed in the reports, allowing them to assertively choose the best tools to meet their
business requirements. Thus, organizations are able to increase their operational efficiency, improving the experience of their customers, partners, and employees, reducing risks and ensuring the continuity of their operations.