Great post – it’s always interesting to see the thinking behind Gartner’s research calendar. Regarding an IAM Magic Quadrant, quite frankly I think it would not only be hotly contested on the vendor side but fairly irrelevant for end users. Customers by and large do not buy “suites” from a single vendor as much as they purchase suite components to solve specific business needs. Calling them “suites” is a misnomer – they are more like product families with loose affiliations. As you recently pointed out (G00166249), the actual integration between those component products is lacking. Most large companies purchase component products to solve the spectrum of security and compliance challenges under the IAM umbrella. They’re less interested in the best of breed vs. suite debate and are instead focused on what is the best technology that solves their problem most effectively. So in effect, there is no market “pull” for IAM suites obviating the need for a Magic Quadrant.

Looking forward to continuing the discussion at the IAM Summit,

Kevin Cunningham
President, SailPoint

I see that there is a MQ for ECM and a separate MS or MQ for records management and Web content management (WCM), two out of the six “core components” of ECM suites identified in the MQ.

But IAM isn’t ECM.

As I said earlier, our experience is that identifying a common set of customer wants and needs for “an IAM suite” is elusive; it seems — to an outsider, and at first blush — that there may be greater consistency in user wants and needs for an ECM suite.

Pragmatically, there are too many important tools that might form part of many enterprises’ “ideal” IAM suite that are not yet offered by the major core vendors, which would skew a MQ in odd ways.

Furthermore, very few enterprises are in the “green field” state where they can “look at the suite Magic Quadrant and avoid the noise about more specialized vendors”, as they likely have some core IAM tools in place already.

And finally, as Earl pointed out in non-MQ/MS research earlier this year (G00166249), “real technology integration between the suite components of a single vendor (or components from different vendors) isn’t significantly differentiating” — but having a single MQ for IAM might tend to imply (or lead readers to infer) that a suite from one vendor is somehow always inherently superior to an ensemble of tools from two or more vendors.

However, I’m not dismissing your suggestion, Deborah, and I’m sure my colleagues and I will revisit this idea when we gather to plan our 2010-11 research agendas.

— Ant

A market is defined by a common set of customer/client wants and needs; identifying that is relatively straightforward for those markets that we do cover in research, but rather elusive for IAM as a whole.

Really, there’s no IAM “market”, it’s really a marketplace — or (in some technology areas) more like a sūḳ…

Gartner does publish research that covers “suites” or less formal ensembles of diverse IAM tools, just not using the Magic Quadrants or MarketScopes format.

Furthermore, Gartner does more than publish written research. Direct interactions with clients, in telephone inquiries or face-to-face, allows us to answer questions about which vendor (or vendors) can best meet any particular set of requirements or who has the best vision for “full-blown” IAM.

— Ant