The Forrester Wave^™ Report: Enterprise Service Management

The Forrester Wave^™ is a guide for buyers considering their purchasing options in a technology marketplace and is based on our analysis and opinion. To offer an equitable process for all participants, Forrester follows a publicly available methodology, which is applied consistently across all participating vendors.

The Forrester Wave^™ uses a transparent methodology to compare the players in a software, hardware, or services market so their clients can make well-informed purchasing decisions. The Forrester Wave^™ offers two major benefits to its readers: a detailed analysis of vendors’ products and services, based on transparent criteria, and an interactive experience that allows clients to customize Forrester’s evaluation findings to their unique business needs. Products are evaluated, provided they are generally available no later than the time of the Wave questionnaire due date.

Participating vendors provide three inputs for a Forrester Wave^™ evaluation: a questionnaire, a strategy and product demo session, and reference customers. During this phase, the research team:

• Distributes a questionnaire with the evaluation criteria: Forrester creates a questionnaire, which includes all the evaluation criteria and instructions about the types of information the analyst is looking for, and distributes it to the participating vendors.
• Holds executive strategy briefings and demonstrations: The vendors follow the criteria laid out in the questionnaire and, potentially, scenarios developed by Forrester to demonstrate the functionality of each product. During the evaluation, the research team captures detailed notes and may record the presentation. Forrester does not provide a copy of the recording to participating vendors.
• Interviews reference customers: Forrester interviews or surveys the reference customers provided by the vendor. If necessary, the analyst also speaks with other customers about the vendor’s product.

A Forrester Wave^™ builds upon the participation of these key players:

• Analyst. The analyst is the content expert for the research. The analyst determines the inclusion criteria, the evaluation criteria, and the scoring framework, based on our methodology, and couples that with their knowledge of the marketplace and the needs of our clients.
• Research director. The research director (RD) works closely with the analyst to develop the inclusion criteria, evaluation criteria, and scoring framework. The RD also reviews all scores and the vendor profiles.

• Project manager. The project manager (PM) is responsible for creating and maintaining the project schedule and serves as the main Forrester contact for the vendors. The PM may also participate in reference customer calls.

• Vendor response team. Forrester relies on this team’s participation to provide feedback on the evaluation criteria, identify candidates for customer interviews, provide demos and briefings, and collect and verify the product and company information we use in the evaluation.
• Reference customers. Forrester asks each vendor we evaluate to provide reference customers. Our research team contacts each of the references to give feedback based on their experience with the service or product we are evaluating. We do not name reference customers in the report unless agreed upon prior to publication. While the Wave is in progress, Forrester views any vendor attempts to speak with references about their responses or ask them to revise their responses after a Wave interview as a violation of the Wave Methodology. This may result in the vendor forfeiting part or all of the vendor review process.

Leader, Strong Performer, Challenger, and Contender. These evaluations represent a top set of vendors in a market. The bands better show where vendors sit in a market relative to their peers and align with our scoring rubric. Evaluated vendors will be ranked as Leaders, Strong Performers, Challengers, or Contenders.

Yes, SolarWinds is recognized in several industry analyst reports that evaluate IT services.

• The Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Observability

Yes, we’re more than happy to demonstrate our products. Please contact us if you have questions about product functionality, use cases, product features, or would like to book a product demo. Need an interactive demo or free trial of any of our products to help your vendor selection? Not a problem.