Understanding Gartner Market Coverage

The Gartner publication calendar for Magic Quadrants and Critical Capabilities is a great way to keep up to date on our market coverage plans. The Magic Quadrant and Critical Capabilities are important to our clients, as they provide the human intelligence and expertise they need to navigate their technology buying journeys. Gartner updates the publication calendar every couple of weeks – and you can see new market coverage emerge all the time.   

This post addresses some common questions and helps vendors navigate this information.   

Covering markets is one of the most valuable things that Gartner does for buyers, vendors, and investors. Buyers consistently find value in objective insights from Gartner to help them make informed technology purchasing decisions. The demand from these buying centers has expanded beyond IT to leaders in other lines of business such as Sales, Marketing, Finance, HR and Supply Chain, among others. Clients are asking for more coverage of mature markets, like those covered in Magic Quadrants and Critical Capabilities, and insights into emerging and dynamic markets, like those covered in Innovation Insights, Emerging Market Quadrants and Market Guides. The result will be more market coverage reports of all types over the next few years.

Gartner realizes vendors spend time and resources to participate in Gartner research processes. Analysts value their input which complements Gartner expertise and proprietary data sources. Gartner is taking steps to reduce the burden and the unanticipated surprises that can make participation difficult. First and foremost, we are providing visibility into what’s on the horizon by keeping up to date the committed research in the one-year publication calendar. Second, Gartner is streamlining the research process to reduce the effort required from vendors to respond to requests for information. Examples include shorter vendor questionnaires to support Magic Quadrant and Critical Capabilities production, improvements to the Gartner vendor portal such as exploring the use of AI to more easily surface re-use of information vendors provide about one market to other markets, and shortening the research production cycle and therefore the time that Gartner insight takes to reach its clients.

All vendors being considered for a specific publication in a market will receive more information about the market definition and inclusion criteria prior to the kickoff of the research process at the same time. Vendors who may be Gartner clients do NOT learn about future research early. Remember, Magic Quadrants will typically appear in the publication calendar several months prior to publication.  

For more information:

Read more about Magic Quadrants

Read more about Critical Capabilities

Read more about Market Guides

Read more about Emerging Market Quadrants

Gartner remains committed to providing high-quality, objective business and technology insights to clients. The Office of the Ombuds will continue to evaluate any concerns about our process, methodology, or published research.

Increased market coverage from Gartner is driven by the needs of technology buyers, not only in IT buying centers, but in all lines of business. Buyers also want an early view into dynamic and emerging markets, which have introduced opportunities for new types of insights. Gartner is providing vendors in all markets with transparency into planned coverage. The Methodologies team is streamlining the process and improving tools to make participation easier for vendors.  

Questions about the publication calendar or how different content is created can be directed to methodologies@gartner.com, and concerns can be sent to the Office of the Ombuds at ombuds@gartner.com.