Reflections on Gartner’s Market Report

It is with mixed feelings that I write this blog post about the Gartner Group’s 2015 IT Market Clock for Digital Commerce report.  You see several weeks ago I divorced the Gartner Group because of irreconcilable differences.   Since then, they’ve mentioned us in at least two of their reports, are considering including us in their Digital Commerce Magic Quadrant report, and have acted as referrals in at least two situations involving Fortune 50 companies.
Did I act in haste?  We’ll see.  Time will tell.  But I’m open to being wrong.
In the interim, let me share with you what I think Corevist’s top 6 takeaways are from the 33 page 2015 IT Market Clock for Digital Commerce report that was released this week.

1. Corevist makes the Sample Vendors list for SaaS Commerce Platforms.  We show up before Demandware, Digital River, eBay, Intershop, Netsuite, Oracle and SAP.  Probably because the list is alphabetized :-)
2. A definitive positioning of when companies should use a SaaS Commerce Platform is presented.  This is probably the most important takeaway for me personally, and definitely rings true with what we’ve seen in the marketplace.  According to Gartner, our type of solution offering (SaaS Commerce) is best suited for:
   • “Organizations with urgent, short launch timelines
   • Large brand manufacturers experimenting with their first forays into B2C (or B2B) digital commerce
   • Organizations that seek to expand to new international markets
   • Organizations with limited IT resources for digital commerce initiatives
   • Organizations that are not interested in the larger upfront costs (I’m amazed that these organizations still exist, but they do) that often accompany on premises or hosted solutions”
3. SaaS Commerce is maturing.  It is moving from early mainstream to mature mainstream status.  For all of those risk averse organizations that we’ve come across over the past 8 years, it’s time to get into the game if you want to gain competitive advantage over your peers.  SaaS Commerce is here to stay, and in fact, according to Gartner, within 2 to 5 years will  become a commodity.
4. Gartner recommends that SaaS Commerce should be acted on in next 12 months.  That puts SaaS Commerce as 1 of only the 3 technology categories analyzed by Gartner (out of 12 total) that they recommend acting on quickly.  The other two are Personalization Engines and Social Commerce Applications.
5. Digital Commerce is about integrating various technologies.  By 2018, more than 50% of commerce sites will integrate technologies from more than 15 vendors.  I totally believe that.  I’m just not sure what’s so magical about 2018.  Almost all of our implementations today approach those number of technologies.
6. The Digital Commerce software market is growing at 14% compound annual growth rate through 2017.  We’re on track to almost triple that this year and there doesn’t appear to be any end in sight to the demand.

A lot of work went into producing this IT Market Clock for Digital Commerce report and I think it’s one of the more valuable pieces of research that I’ve seen come out of Gartner in the past year.  It’s well worth getting a copy if you’re in the market to go Digital.
Sam