Gartner Magic Quadrant in the News: Netscout Matter
August 11, 2014
I read “Gartner MQ under Fire—Netscout Alleges Unfair Practices in Pay to Play Lawsuit.”
The write up reports that “Netscout is suing research firm Gartner, accusing it of unfair practices in its construction of a Magic Quadrant, citing pay to play.” The magic quadrant lingo is important because it is different language than that used by Bruce D. Henderson in the early 1970s.
This is likely to be a contentious matter. You can find the court filing in the Diginomica story. The document is about 60 pages long and probably not suited for consumption on an iPhone whilst driving.
Who are the folks involved in the squabble?
Netscout offers what it calls “unified service delivery management solutions.” The company is publicly traded and reported revenue of about $400 million in revenue. You can get more information via Google Finance at http://bit.ly/1mCtlJI and information about Netscout at www.netscout.com.
Gartner is a consulting and services firm generating about $1.8 billion per year in revenue. You can get more information via Google finance at http://bit.ly/1kWiX4x. Details about Gartner’s products and services are available at www.gartner.com.
I don’t have any experience or dealings with either firm. Will the interaction end in a race track accident like that at Canandaigua Motorsports Park?
The Gartner Magic Quadrant, in my opinion, is a variation of the Boston Consulting Group’s diagram containing a star, cow, dog, and question mark. The BCG method, if I recall my Booz, Allen charm school lesson, is that a ton of expensive analytic work was presented to often sluggish corporate types in one simple chart.
Here’s an example of the BCG approach recreated by Marketing Health Online:
I remember that a “dog” was not good. Dogs should be sold, killed, or kicked to the side of the road. It was definitely good to the a “star.” Stars generate revenue and illuminate the new BMW or yacht the manager of the star could buy with a bonus. The “cow” gave recurring revenues. When the cow stopped pumping out milk, then it morphed into a dog. A question mark required more analysis and, hence, more consulting work for our competitor.
The x axis reports the market share from high to low and the y axis represents market growth. High is good and BCG generated data and analysis to prove what was good. Low is bad and BCG displayed data that explained why something was a dog and should be treated with extreme prejudice.
The key to the BCG grid was its utter simplicity parked on top of hundreds of thousands or dollars invested in BCG time, analysis, and data crunching by fairly bright individuals from pretty good schools. My employer, Booz, Allen & Hamilton, was never able to create such a compelling graphic to drive business, but we did “invent” program evaluation and review techniques or PERT charts. You know our work as PERT charts. But that BCG method was a burr under the Booz, Allen saddles. We couldn’t rip off the approach. That was against the rules when I worked at the blue chip outfit. I have no idea what the rules are today.
Gartner’s chart is different, using words, lots of words when compared to the BCG chart looks similar. Here’s the graphic from Diginomica’s write up:
My hunch is that the legal eagles would take flight if an actual, 100 percent pure magic quadrant were reproduced in the article. (Note: you can download a representative magic quadrant from one of the companies included in the report. You will have to do some Googling to find a “real” MQ report. Have fun!)
If the information in the Diginomica write up is accurate, it seems that BCG’s legendary rigor may not be exactly duplicated by Gartner’s “experts.” I am skeptical of the saucisson generated by any consulting firm, but some saucisson is judged by gourmands as better than others.
Diginomica notes:
Vendors regard analyst services as part of their marketing, which in turn supports sales. The lawsuit makes this very clear. Buyers view the Gartner MQ as a validation point. Gartner plays on this, selling it to the the vendors on the basis that no-one buys technology without making a decision based upon a Gartner MQ. It’s a subtle form of implied blackmail that discriminates against the smaller vendors. When a mega vendor cuts a $1 million check to Gartner, no-one notices. But when an early stage business find itself having to stump $50-100,000 then that’s an altogether different matter that gets sucked out of limited marketing resource.
The Diginomica analysis points out that another company tried to sue Gartner in 2009 and “lost their fight with Gartner.”
Is this legal dust up different? Who knows.
Several observations:
- Analysis and consulting opinions are often pretty wild and crazy. I remember the analysis that preceded our implementation of the Marketing Analysis and Reporting System (MARS) for Bellcore in 1985 as quite the cat’s pajamas. Well, we know how the IBM MVS TSO environment worked out for end users who were not into green screens, or fans of keyboards with lots of extra keys.
- The BCG matrix is now part of the intellectual woodwork for anyone with an MBA. It just makes it so easy to explain why some products and companies are losers. It is an SU 35 for selling more consulting work for companies other than BCG, a firm which still adheres to the old fashioned analysis, analysis, and more analysis method of consulting.l .
- Who cares what today’s mid tier third party advisors say?For the hourly worker at Wendy’s, a graphic with lots of words is probably less compelling than a snapshot of a Kardashian. Content marketing is the name of the game today. Clicks, sales leads, and revenue—the Red Bull for success.
Take a look at the Diginomica article. This interaction will be fun to watch. I wonder if it will be possible to plot the matter using a BCG matrix?
Stephen E Arnold, August 11, 2014
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