Gartner's Magic Quadrant for IT Event Correlation and Analysis

Gartner's Magic Quadrant for IT Event Correlation and Analysis (ECA), 2009 (see Figure 1) evaluates vendors' ability to execute and their completeness of vision relative to a defined set of evaluation criteria regarding current and future market requirements. A Magic Quadrant should not be the only criterion for selecting a vendor, because the right solution for a given situation can be in any quadrant, depending on the specific needs of the enterprise. Enterprises considering the purchase of an ECA product should develop their own list of evaluation criteria and functional requirements in the categories of event collection/consolidation, processing/correlation and presentation. Large enterprises should consider a multitier event management hierarchy, pushing some event processing and correlation out to the managed IT element at the bottom of the hierarchy. These enterprises should use specialized event management tools in the middle, and should place a "manager of managers" or a business service management (BSM) product on top. When investing in event management, prospects should understand how the product will fit with their overall event-to-incident/problem resolution processes, including workflow, escalation and integration with service desk tools.