Gartner 2009 SIEM Magic Quadrant

Updated 15 Jan 2010 (see bottom)
Gartner 2009 SIEM Magic Quadrant - It’s pretty easy to digest - Everyone is in the leader quadrant or is a “leader” of some sort.  No vendor has any “real” negatives, they will all work in nearly any situation, everything is peachy.  You can register with many of the vendors to receive your copy of the Gartner Magic Quadrant for SIEM 2009 report.  A few of those links are provided here:  Q1, ArcSight, LogLogic , RSA

My obviously frustrated opinion:
If you are an executive, director, manager, technician or otherwise breath air and you use this report to make any sort of determination about SIEM vendor qualifications you should probably be seeking professional career advice.  This report is great at providing the SIEM vendors with additional fodder to confuse the sales prospects, but it does absolutely nothing for the reader seeking information about which SIEM might fit their environment.  This is the one time that I don’t blame the vendors, they have to play the game.  The game is to mitigate the effect of competitive “spin” based on the results of the report by the “leaders” listed within the report.  Along those lines I won’t use this post to congratulate or bash vendors as to their relative position in the quadrant because it’s just insane to justify anything about this report.

Every year, I review these SIEM reports and find myself hoping that the next issue will reveal something insightful or even slightly meaningful.  I scrub the “cautions” looking for anything that points to a material technical weakness in the technology and usually the most meaningful thing I find is a veiled “feature request” for some trivial item.  A review of the “strengths” of each organization shows the points to be at best highly subjective and usually just completely irrelevant.  I always leave frustrated, but hopeful that the next version will set things right. 

Gartner isn’t alone in it’s pursuit of mediocrity here.  Most (not all) of the “analyst” firms and industry magazines offer a strikingly similar lack of useful information in their reports.  Please note: this is in no way a personal attack on any author or company, it’s a rant against crappy information as a whole.  Over the years I’ve met most of the reviewers and they “seem to get it” in person, it’s just the nature of these “ranking without context” reports that simply kills the value of any insight the authors might have tried to present.  The 451Group and a few others have tried to buck that trend over the years and are making some progress, but despite their efforts the overall industry standard is still too watered down to be of any real value. 

I know I’m not endearing myself to the analyst community right now, and I expect certain vendors won’t appreciate what I’m saying but bear with me here.  I think we can make this better and everyone can benefit.  As an industry we must start expecting better from our information providers.  We need to provide specific feedback about what information these reports should provide in order to be meaningful.  I have tried to influence better context and more meaningful technical criteria through several older blog posts and through conversations with anyone that will listen.  I’ll step up my game and offer even more direct advice in the coming months - I’m just asking that everyone do the same.  Let’s encourage our information providers to pursue a higher standard. 

Maybe, next year… Hey I’m a Cubs fan - There is always next year! 

EDIT - UPDATE-1 15 Jan 2010

So after I posted this blog I pretty much went on with life.  I did run into some Gartner folks at their IT Security Forum in DC right after this post and learned alot more about how Gartner positions these MQ offerings.  I’ve got to say that with the right perspective in place I’m much more agreeable to what they are trying to do from a macro perspective.  They do offer more detailed analytical documents (critical capabilities) and they do push for more detailed requirements gathering for buyers that send them inquiries.  I was expecting something else and really in the end that was the problem, my expectations were misaligned with the intention of this MQ.  So to Mark Nicolett I apologize for not taking the time to really dig deeper into your approach.  I do respect what you are doing and my offer to help still applies.

For those seeking more information about the Gartner SIEM MQ - Mark Nicolett’s guest blog post explains the process very well—> http://blogs.gartner.com/john_pescatore/2009/06/15/guest-blogger-mark-nicolett-and-the-siem-market/