A lot of the people paying for these analyst firm reports are sales people-so they can pass them on to their customers/prospects (to legally do that you often have to pay extra for “redistribution rights”)… and then the customer/prospect gets to read it for free
Who might not have much of an engineering team, or not one with relevant expertise… and why should they trust the vendor’s engineering team? If they are about to sign a contract for $$$, being able to find support for it in an independent analyst report can psychologically help a lot in the sales cycle
While the most useful reports for sales are those which directly compare products, like Gartner Magic Quadrant or Forrester Wave - a powerful tool if you come out on top - these kind of more background reports can help if the sales challenge is less “whose product should I buy?” and more “do I even need one of these products? should we be investing money in this?”
Who might not have much of an engineering team, or not one with relevant expertise… and why should they trust the vendor’s engineering team? If they are about to sign a contract for $$$, being able to find support for it in an independent analyst report can psychologically help a lot in the sales cycle
While the most useful reports for sales are those which directly compare products, like Gartner Magic Quadrant or Forrester Wave - a powerful tool if you come out on top - these kind of more background reports can help if the sales challenge is less “whose product should I buy?” and more “do I even need one of these products? should we be investing money in this?”