From Insights to Action: How GigaOm Drives Strategic Innovation for CloudOps and Cybersecurity Teams

Mike Shuster supports companies across critical technology marketing including CloudOps, FinOps, Observability, and Cybersecurity. With the experience of practitioner-analyst led research. Mike has found GigaOm to be an invaluable partner for navigating modern cloud native technologies and the constantly changing cybersecurity landscape.

Engagement: Analysts, CxO, TCO, Engineering Testing and Radars

Mike’s engagement with GigaOm primarily revolves around the research process, which includes questionnaires, briefings, positioning, production, and fact-checking.

The process itself is highly engaging, requiring significant interaction and collaboration between Mike’s teams and GigaOm’s analysts. “The process is totally collaborative. It’s fascinating to watch, the internal time and investment with our teams, the back and forth for clarifications. I know that our teams are really engaged in that. The level of engagement is always far deeper and always puts the customer perspective first,” says Mike Shuster.

A significant factor in this engagement is GigaOm’s practitioner-level approach. “You guys are hands-on practitioners. I can’t really say that about anyone else,” notes Mike. This hands-on expertise, combined with a deep understanding of both strategic and technical aspects of cloud operations, sets GigaOm apart from other analyst firms.

GigaOm’s analysts bring experience from strategy to deployment, which is crucial for Mike’s product management teams. Mike highlights the unique value provided by GigaOm’s CTO, Howard Holton: “Howard’s level of engagement and advice, his understanding of the needs of enterprise CxO customers brings valuable and actionable insights to our teams.

Delivery: Strategy and Roadmaps

GigaOm’s Radar reports are not just analytical tools; they are strategic assets that Mike uses for defining and refining its product strategy and roadmap.

“Our Product Management and Engineering leaders told the team to read GigaOm’s feedback on our development process, which clearly showed how we needed to accelerate the platform integration work,” says Mike.

One of the key differentiators of GigaOm’s approach is their ability to provide roadmap guidance based on a deep understanding of customer needs and market dynamics. This insight helps Mike’s product teams prioritize what features to develop and when to release them, ensuring they stay ahead of the competition.

Given the structured nature of GigaOm’s Radar reports, Mike’s teams gain a clear understanding of which product features are becoming standard (table stakes) and which are emerging as differentiators. This insight is critical for making informed decisions about their product roadmaps.
Mike recalls, “Our teams really value our discussions. We’ve had calls when our team has said, it’s on the roadmap but it’s a year out and have asked, do we really need to move that to the next 6 months? Or that maybe they are investing too much time, or the customer is not ready to adopt yet. They then think through the conversation, and make adjustments to the roadmap. GigaOm then goes the last mile with sales to enable our company to engage customers by persona, a GigaOm core competency.

Summary

GigaOm’s approach extends beyond traditional analysis by bringing a practitioner-led dimension and a comprehensive technical perspective that other firms cannot match. This perspective fills critical gaps in understanding market dynamics and competitor strategies, providing Mike with unique insights that directly influence their product development and market positioning.