Methodology

The approach described here was largely inspired by Dolnicar et al., 2018.

Market segmentation is exploratory and evolutive. There is no right or wrong market segmentation but one market segmentation may be more or less valuable depending on what we expect from it and how it was designed.

Segmentation is only as good as it serves its objectives. Thus, clarifying our objectives is of paramount importance:

The key objective of this market segmentation is to support organizations and IAM professionals analyze the products and services within the extended IAM market and enable useful comparisons.

The desirable characteristics of a market segment should be (by order of importance):

• Homogeneity - All the members of a market segment must share common characteristics.

• Mutual exclusivity - Vendors may be active on multiple segments. But for products and services, when feasible, segments should be mutually exclusive. This is not feasible when the segmentation takes place on different dimensions (e.g. “Open-Source vendors” that focuses on vendor characteristics vs “PAM vendors” that focuses on vendor offerings).

• Relative size - Too small or too large segments may be of lower interest.

• Consensus - if a segment is generally recognized as such, it will be easier to find data and research referencing it. While consensus does bring value with data availability, this should not prevent us from exploring alternative segmentation.

Key Dimensions

• Product & services features

• Industrial specializations - An IAM product that focuses on answering challenges related to

• Vendor geographical focus - An IAM consulting company that focuses its activity on a national market.

• Vendor capabilities

• Other vendor characteristics

List