Matthias
Welcome to the KuppingerCole Analyst Chat. I'm your host. My name is Matthias Reinwarth. I'm an Advisor and Analyst with KuppingerCole Analysts. Today we have a very special episode. This is the Analyst Chat and at least one person in the chat won't be an analyst and that is something new. We want to talk about something that is new at KuppingerCole Analysts, it's really about how we provide services, how we provide information to our audience, to our community. And that is what we want to talk about. So after this episode, when we have been talking to Vanessa and Alexei, say you will know what the Membership is and why you of course want to be a member with KuppingerCole Analysts in the community. So I've mentioned it already, we want to talk about the Membership, but first of all, I want to introduce my two guests. First of all, I want to introduce Vanessa Schweihofer. She is the Chief Customer Officer, Hi Vanessa, good to have you.
Vanessa
Thanks for having me today.
Matthias
Great to have you. And her counterpart is Alexei Balaganski. He is a Lead Analyst with KuppingerCole but much more importantly, he is the CTO for KuppingerCole, so Chief Technology Officer. So he is the person who knows everything about the technical gory details and how things work together and how services are delivered. Hi Alexei, good to have you.
Alexei
Hello, Matthias. Great to be here again.
Matthias
Great to have you both and let's talk about the Membership. Membership, what is the Membership? Maybe Alexei, to give a brief definition, what is the Membership that we're talking about?
Alexei
Well, of course, I guess Vanessa would give you the formal definition of the whole thing afterwards. But for me as an analyst, this is basically the new tool, the new way to make sure that my job as an analyst, understanding the market, knowing and following all the trends, meeting every relevant vendor in all the areas we cover, basically all that information is not being lost or being kind of process transformed into various formats and being delivered straight to our customers and visitors. Of course, we've been doing this for 20 years, but the essential goal of this project was to make it as easy, as fast, as continuous a process as possible. That's basically my understanding of this whole project.
Matthias
That's a good starting point. And then of course, I need to hand over to Vanessa. So how does that Membership aim to enhance the customer engagement in everything that KuppingerCole does in AI, in identity and access, in cybersecurity and more?
Vanessa
Yeah, well, we did a lot of research and collecting feedback of our business customers to really design Membership packages that help strengthen clients' cybersecurity and IAM knowledge, also of course AI. And the members gain access, for example, to detect market analyzes, all sorts of reports, blog posts, videos that help them to better understand threats and trends. And also the user benefits from strategic advice in form of inquiry calls, advisory services and workshops, which is great in the different packages and levels. The Membership also offers quite a lot of networking opportunities, whether it's via the website or they can engage with experts and peers and share best practices, for example, on our events. So in a nutshell, it enables companies and single users at the same time to continuously improve and keep their security strategy up to date.
Matthias
You've mentioned already there are different tiers, different plans for this Membership. So one can choose whether they start at an entry level or get the full-blown packages. Which packages are available?
Vanessa
Right now, we have currently three Membership packages. We start with a Professional Membership. Well, that is not a new one. It's already used by many, many, of our customers. And it offers full access to the KuppingerCole comprehensive and cutting-edge research, expert analyzes, and all of that for one single user. And then we have the Expert Membership, also addresses the single user, also offers the full access to comprehensive research materials. But then on top we have two personalized inquiry calls with a KuppingerCole Analyst, one event ticket and discount on an additional event ticket. So this package, I think, really empowers users to make informed decisions and build valuable connections at the same time and all of that at an affordable entry point. Now, the third package called the Corporate Membership is designed for teams and includes a wide range of services. It gives, of course, again, access to all research content, but this time up to three users. 12 inquiry calls with a KuppingerCole Analyst, one full day workshop that also can be conducted as two half-day workshops and three event tickets and additional discounted event tickets. And we're still not at the end, so we also have discounted advisory services in that package. it's a full package of everything a company or a team could need to maximize security and if a team consists of more than three people, well this is not a problem at all because this package also offers additional user seats, each equipped with research access and an event ticket.
Alexei
If I may add an important addition to this very thorough explanation. Well, first of all, I mean, you don't need to spend tons of money to just become a member of KuppingerCole's community. Basically everyone is invited to start small, to just join the website. It's completely free. And we have actually spent quite a lot of time to make the process as quick and painless as possible. And you will already be a member. You will get access to some of the features, probably not all those fancy ones Vanessa described, but you would still be able to read our research and to watch our videos and stuff and even benefit from some of the new features we will be describing in a minute. And then of course, at every time you can even try our paid features for free. offer one week free trial access for anyone interested. So absolutely, our goal is to grow the community and to actually make it a real community where people not just talk to us, but also to each other. So it's not just a consulting vehicle, if you will, but also a great network.
Matthias
And I think that is the most important part, building a community of these members at any given tier that you just described, from the entry level up to the full blown corporate level, allows people to communicate with each other and with us. And that's the main idea behind that, to create a platform. So really getting people in touch with each other, what we see at our events when people are just talking to each other. Without the vendors, without the analysts, without the consultant companies, just getting in touch with each other and just learning from each other with peers. Now we have Alexei on board for this call. He's CTO. That means there's technology involved. There are new services around. So what new capabilities can members at any tier look forward to what is already there, what will come in the future?
Alexei
Right. Well, first of all, I want to make one important statement, that this is just kind of start of a long strategic journey. Of course, the project was initiated months ago. We worked hard to bring our first implementation, if you will, to a release point earlier in September. But of course, it's not the end. We are already working on new capabilities and features. And that's actually the whole point of this project strategically. This is a journey both for us at KuppingerCole and our community members. Our primary goal is basically to keep the people busy, informed as a continuous stream of content delivered on an ideal daily basis, but at the very least, every time you visit our website, will be guaranteed to find something new to read, to watch, to listen, to interact and so on. One important first step for us was, as I mentioned earlier, to make the registration process as frictionless and easy as possible. And since we are actually analysts who have been preaching for passwordless access and secure access management and identity for years, well, finally, have it actually. We have started eating our own dog food and we have a passwordless customer identity management solution added to our website. So now if you want to basically become a member, you really are just one mouse click away from it. You can also use multiple social networks, LinkedIn, even GitHub or Microsoft to join instantly without any passwords, without anything which would potentially compromise your security or privacy. That was like the first building block for the entire project, a prerequisite, if you will. The second big job for us, for the development team was to incorporate various artificial intelligence capabilities. Of course, everyone is now bringing AI into every project. Our goal was to make it sensible and fitting to use cases. even now, even today, you will already find a few very useful and I believe very kind of experience enhancing capabilities on the website, which are powered by AI. For example, we would know what interesting materials to suggest for you as soon as we learn a little bit about your reading or watching preferences, which topics you're interested in and so on. And you can feed us with that information through your likes and dislikes and bookmarks and whatever. We will know what to suggest you to read or watch next. So personalized recommendations was a pretty big deal for us. We also have a chatbot. And again, I know that everyone now has a chatbot. Our goal was basically to give you as many ways to consume our research as possible. Of course, you can still go and directly watch a one-hour recording of a webinar or read a 100-page long Leadership Compass. And I actually encourage you to do that if you are really looking for sophisticated and detailed advisory. But if you are not sure, if you don't have enough time, you can just ask our chatbot, our virtual research assistant a question. Who are the leaders in the passwordless Leadership Compass? Or what webinars KuppingerCole is planning next? Or who is Matthias Reinwarth and what has he been doing for the company and stuff like that? And you would get an instant response from our chatbot. And hopefully it will also give you useful links to continue your research. Again, my personal view of this whole project was let's make it as interesting as spending your night binge reading Wikipedia and following more and more links. But of course, with KuppingerCole research.
Matthias
I really can recommend that chatbot because it can do things that even our analysts cannot do. So if you really come up with questions that combine knowledge of KuppingerCole it might be that this chatbot can answer that question. If... a good question or as an example that I tried to use and which really worked out fine, if you ask, there any vendors that are leaders in both multifactor and IGA, then it has read both Leadership Compasses and it can say, the following vendors are leaders in both documents. And it will give you a list and a link to the Leadership Compasses, which is really nifty.
Alexei
Right. And we have not stopped working. Just this week, we have added, for example, another tiny but nifty feature, which we call video insights and research insights. Again, before diving into a long research paper, you will just get a concise overview of what is this paper actually about, what are the biggest recommendations and takeaways and interesting facts and quotes in that paper just to give you, as they now say on the internet, "too long did not read", the solution to that problem. So you would decide for yourself, do you actually want to read the entirety of the paper or you would rather move to something else. And again, our goal is to always offer you something else.
Vanessa
And I think this is super interesting and helpful. So I mean, we have so much research that we can provide to our customers, whether they are business customers or vendors. But getting this condensed information via the chatbot is just a great thing to have. It makes things so much easier in daily work.
Matthias
And as Alexei mentioned, we aim to have something new at least every day. And that also brings us into the situation that we need to provide something new every day, so we need to be more topical, more current, closer to the actual news, without forgetting the analyst perspective, which is always stepping a step back and saying, Ok how does that fit into the overall picture? But how do we, as KuppingerCole make sure that the members stay up to date, for example, when there are new trends arising or even more fast or quickly, are there new threats arising that need to be dealt with? How do we make sure that this happens, Alexei?
Alexei
Well, again, first and foremost, you're right. We do have a huge, very comprehensive existing library of content. And even if it's not updated daily, there is tons of useful insights and bits of information there, which our goal is to unlock, to make it consumable in a variety of different ways. Some things we have already made available earlier, like for example, our KuppingerCole OpenSelect project, which is basically making a Leadership Compass paper into an interactive tool for you to help you with the choice of the right solution. And the same approach we are applying everywhere. So yes, we would always try to make our content deliverable in various formats, printed, online, interactive. We are considering some other possibilities well, not all unfortunately can be disclosed already. So watch this space. Watch our website. Another important thing is to make sure that our analysts can actually respond to threats and challenges and just kind of new events much quicker because you know, writing a Leadership Compass takes months. Responding to a new event like the CrowdStrike Blackout for example. It has to be much faster. So you probably won't see it on the website, on the customer facing part of the website at least. But we are working hard on making this journey of new content from the analyst's mind to the paper or to the website as short as possible. And one of the things you can expect in the near future is basically to see more really short, concise, but extremely current content. Basically, people responding, and responding to events as they occur and not, let's say, two weeks later. This is something we're working on as well. And of course, again, AI helps us do it in a way that saves us time and gives you more opportunities to consume our content. So we are definitely investing a lot of effort in adding more AI features. Even if they are not necessarily labeled as AI, as some companies love to do nowadays, we do see a lot of productivity boost, if you will, from those capabilities, from those technologies.
Matthias
Great, thank you. I think for those who are listening to that podcast episode, I think for them it's easier for us to explain what the beauty of this thing is because you get content, you really are growing with knowledge and maybe also with maturity regarding the topics that KuppingerCole does cover. But when we look at the enterprise level, at the enterprise tier offerings that you Vanessa already mentioned, Why should an organization actually move from a personal seat, why should a CISO or an architect recommend to say, okay, let's move to a Corporate Membership? What makes it special and why should they do it?
Vanessa
They should obviously do it because it's not only about the CISO or the leader of a team, it addresses the whole team and addresses the growth of the whole team. And I think the Corporate Membership is a kind of all around carefree package and tailored to the needs of any IT team, no matter where, no matter how, in a highly flexible way. I think development, personal development, team development is quite important nowadays as threats and things like that emerge so fast and happen so fast. Well, so I think that this is quite important to have a team Membership as well to promote all of the team members at the same time and to give them the chance to learn in a daily process. And the Corporate Membership is really focused on driving enhancement and at the same time helping organizations remain resilient, compliant and secure. So I think it's really designed to foster team success by promoting the insights, growth and also the great networking capabilities.
Alexei
You know, there is this very popular term shifting left, like shifting security left. And many people understand it in a way that it's the developers who have to take over the security responsibilities for an organization. Well, it's not like that, actually. What it, I believe, really means is that everyone has to be the part of understanding your company's security, be able to kind of invest their time and actually get some productive results from that. And yeah, take decisions, take responsibility and in the end, basically ensure that nothing bad happens to the company. And this of course involves not just the developers or the line of business workers, but the CEO and the other high level management team members, so to say. So yes, it's absolutely important that everyone in the company has direct access to this kind of security and identity focused advisory.
Vanessa
Absolutely, for example, CISOs more or less give the framework to the security strategy of a company, but the IT professionals working for the CISO or in this team are really the ones who need to be updated and stay up to date to everything that could happen, to any threat that could come up and things like that. So yes, completely agree with Alexei at this point.
Alexei
Well, even if your CFO, for example, would like to know more about the current risk of implementing a new payment technology, for example, they absolutely should. And we are ready to help them to understand the issues from their perspective. So, absolutely.
Matthias
And I think the combination of knowledge that KuppingerCole obviously has through our research plus communication, that I think is the important part of really bringing people together, asking the right questions, getting the right answers to the right questions. That is everything that this Membership also is about to really communicate, to find peers, to talk to them. And that brings me to my next question because if it's not only consumption of a PDF and talking to a chat bot, but also making sure that there is the opportunity to have an analyst appear within another customer organization at hand to talk to them. I think that is a next step and it's a logical step to continue that communication. You've mentioned that already, Vanessa, inquiry calls and workshops, they are part of the bigger packages that we are thinking about and that we are offering right now. How can they be leveraged to empower organizations to use this communication to strengthen their capabilities when it comes to IAM and cybersecurity? So where is KuppingerCole really shining?
Vanessa
Yeah, that's a great question. Thank you for asking. I really think that the inquiry calls and workshops provide IT professionals at all levels with personalized insights. And that makes the difference to consuming reports or webinars or things like that. And so having the personal insights from KuppingerCole Analysts that dive even deeper than these written reports since they are tailor-made to the needs and challenges of the customer. And this makes the difference at that point. And along with IAM and cybersecurity trainings, we do offer as well to address specific security challenges and to safeguard against emerging risks. And I think that this package not only having reports to read and access to our research library as huge it is already, I think this personal interaction with KuppingerCole analysts and advisors is that little thing that really makes a huge difference to this package. So yeah, this is why we are very happy about the Corporate Membership and both the inquiry calls and workshops are designed to offer expert guidance, practical insights, and of course, tailored service.
Matthias
I've prepared for that question a long time because it's the shortest question that I can ask: And what happens then?
Vanessa
Well then, I mean this is of course not the end. What happens then? Of course our expertise goes far beyond inquiry calls and workshops. And once an area of improvement is identified through the inquiry calls, the workshops, our research, our groundbreaking events in the area of IAM, AI and cybersecurity, well then we have our team of super high level advisors that can then provide structured solutions to support. And well, I need to mention that of course for the corporate members with attractive discounts on this service as well.
Matthias
So that really looks like a comprehensive offering starting from the entry level, from the advisors, from the team members who just want to learn more. There's an option for them and there's a growing set of services that you already described. Alexei, you've mentioned already that we will be expanding these services and we will be expanding regarding the content that we provide, but also the formats that we provide. I do love the chatbot, I've mentioned that already, and there are lots of chatbots around which I don't like, which I usually immediately block on the website when I see them, but I don't block ours and you shouldn't as well. So we invite everybody who's watching right now to put our words to the test, to come over to the KuppingerCole website as a first starting point and really try the entry level, the free tier, the one week test period to really challenge and verify that everything that Vanessa and Alexei and me just talked about that this is true and that this is really helpful. mentioned, we cannot disclose anything. Are there some hints that you could give what will be coming next so that people can sit at the front of their chairs and already wait for us to deliver?
Alexei
One obvious thing that kind of follows straight from the title of this whole thing, we are going to add more real community building features. So yes, absolutely. Even if you just sign up as a free member, basically, without investing anything other than a little bit of your time, you will be able to, again, to communicate with other members and maybe even become a distinguished community recognized expert in that regard. And that of course will bring you certain benefits from our perspective and of course, huge respect from the community. So this is something which we are definitely thinking and working and planning and preparing for already. Probably won't happen overnight, but this is our strategic goal. Again, advisory and content and all the stuff we've been doing for 20 years basically. The primary focus of this specific project is to make it accessible to a real, proper, large community. And this is what we are focusing on.
Vanessa
And also of course allow peer-to-peer communication as well. So it's not one way, it's not only from the member to the analyst or to the advisor but also like peer-to-peer seems to us quite important for our next step and so this is something we're working on.
Matthias
I think it's also clear that of course we as KuppingerCole Analysts, are on a mission here. And we want you as you are out there in any shape or form to be part of that community, contribute and benefit from it. Before we close down, a quick question to both of you. Final words regarding the Membership. What are the thoughts that you want to share with the audience before we close down? Maybe starting with you, Vanessa. Final thoughts?
Vanessa
Final thoughts? Well, I'm quite excited. We realized that since we have launched the Membership, there's a lot of activity going on and we hope that this is an ongoing process that gets even bigger and bigger. And we are really looking forward to also speaking at the cyber evolution, for example, with our end customers, business customers to collect more ideas about their needs and what they think of the Membership as well to really integrate that. This is not a KC project that we decide about the way and what it should be. Content wise, yes, a bit, it's a, well, it's a platform that is for business customers and this is how we want to keep it. And really this is why we need the input from this side as well. And so, yeah, I'm very, very excited what's coming next and yeah, very happy about it.
Alexei
Well, for me, as a person actually responsible for implementing all these features, it's extremely important to hear your feedback. mean, you're, as all our listeners and viewers and all the visitors to the website. This is a community, this is built and being built for you. So of course, if you have any suggestions, complaints, bug reports. Whatever kind of ideas, please feel free to reach out through any available channel, email, the contact form on the website or any other way you can think of. We are open to any kind of feedback. Thank you.
Matthias
Absolutely. And I think there's even one more way to communicate with us. And if you're watching that on YouTube, please leave your comment in the comment section just below that video. And everything else that Alexei said is true regarding the, of course, the Membership and the subscription and the services that we provide online, but also regarding this podcast. So if you have suggestions regarding more topics to cover, more topics to dive deeper into, to bring back Vanessa, or anything else that we can do in that podcast, please let us know. We are keen learning more from you and really providing services that are of benefit to you. And with that, want to say thank you to Vanessa and Alexei for being here, to both of you for implementing that stuff. And I know there was a lot of work by the two of you and by the whole team going into that first initial version 1.0 of that service. and it will grow so the 1.1 is just around the corner. Thank you to the both of you and looking forward to having you both soon here again. Thank you.
