Exploring Futurum Signal | Shimmy Says Ep. 21

Hey everyone, it's Thursday. Welcome to another Shimmy. Says, I'm really glad you're joining us today.

You know, in addition to going live on LinkedIn, we added something new to the mix. We're live on X. com on X, you could check this out, live there.

And, uh, happy to have you in here. Um, I'm actually really happy to be joined by a guest who's gonna be joining us today on Shimmy Says, and we're bringing them in. We've never done this before, so bear with us.

But we're actually gonna bring a guest into the, uh, into the live stream with me. It's Futurum, COO President, Dan O'Brien, Dan o as we call him, Dan. O welcome.

Is this what We've never done this before, Dan, is it working? It's working for me. Yeah.

Appreciate your, All right, man. We, we brought you in after we went on, so that's, that's good to know that this works. Dan, welcome to Shimmy.

Says, man, it's great to have you on. Yeah, awesome to be here. Thank you, Alan.

Thank you. So, Dan, look, yesterday was a big day. We announced UR Signal.

Of course it goes live August 20th. So everything we're saying here is a bit of a preview, you know, but we'll do our best. And look, August 20th is next week.

It's not like we pre-announce this for next year or something. com. com, tech strong, AI tech, strong IT, security Boulevard, everywhere we could think of.

So I encourage people go out there, read about it. I don't have enough time in nine or 10 minutes to tell you the whole signal story. Mm-hmm.

Dan, I wanted to focus today, not on the great way. We're collecting data using agen ai, and, and I would deal with G two for exclusive G two A, uh, data access as well as the renowned FU analyst. Mm-hmm.

Input. Right? So we've got three great data sources, but I want to talk about what, what's the end user experience like in Future Signal, right?

Why should people, to me, I, you know, the way I wrote about it is, look, we moved from, from Shaken PBF reports and emailing them every quarter or two to almost like an app, like always on experience. Yeah, absolutely. What g give, uh, without giving away too much, 'cause it's not the 20th, I get it, but give a, give share with us what, what's the end user experience like here?

What are they seeing? What are they getting? What's in it?

Let's see. Th again, thank you for having me all, Alan. Um, you know, when I think about the end user experience, I think we're really trying to improve upon kinda what else is out there in a few meaningful ways.

You know, one, I think we're trying to be much more forward looking, right? You know, if you're just starting a buying decision right now as a technology decision maker, you're probably happy to be up and running in production in six months, right? So, you know, we really need something that's predictive, that's looking at the momentum, the roadmaps of the vendor community against the market need, and really telegraphing for the end user, you know, based on when you might be installing this software.

You know, here's who we expect to be able to meet your needs at that future state, right? So really trying to turn this from a rear view mirror, uh, you know, buying guide, you know, buying, uh, advisor into something that's much more predictive on where the market's going, and much more forward looking. Um, as a buyer, we really want people to feel like the data that they're getting from the futurum signal is gonna make them look smart two to three years from now in terms of the decision they make today, right?

Yep. So I think that's one. Um, I think two, we're really trying to zoom out from the kind of micro product evaluations that really exist out there in the market.

Um, it's no secret, you know, buyers are buying at a platform level now. Every decision they make is made in the context of the platform decisions that they've made. Um, but we really don't see the platform, uh, market well served by, you know, other, you know, existing evaluations out there.

It's very down in the weeds at a tool level without much context as to what other, you know, what other major decisions have been made in the IT stack that that next technology is going to be embedded into. Right? Absolutely.

I think we're, we're trying to be much more dynamic, much more real time in, you know, in terms of really adjusting the view to the reality of what's going on in the world around us, right? Um, I don't need to tell you how fast the innovation is happening in an AI right now, right? You know, the, the leaders of today were not leaders six months ago, the leaders of six months ago.

Were not leaders today in many cases. And, uh, we really need something that takes that data in from the market in real time, um, and is keeping up with the pace of change in the pace of innovation in the market. So, you know, something that refreshes on an annual cycle, you know, is, is maybe somewhat accurate the day it publishes though, probably still already out of date.

Um, and by the time, you know, uh, you know, by the time we're almost a year later and they're thinking about refreshing it, the market that they evaluated doesn't exist anymore. The market that people are living in is, is, is very different and much more dynamic. Um, so I think those are a few of the things from an end user perspective that we can, you know, really expect out of this is, you know, something that's much more predictive, much more reactive to the world around us in real time, uh, mergers and acquisitions, major roadmap changes, um, you know, kind of key, you know, technology evolving, right?

I mean, who would've thought 18 months ago that, you know, designing for, you know, agent to agent and MCP servers were critical decisions you were gonna make in your stack, right? Well, you know, turns out that that's, that's actually latched pretty quickly. Um, and it's become really an industry standard quite quickly.

Um, so anyway, a a few bits of color there on kind of what the end user can expect. Sure. We think we're solving a lot of what, you know, a lot of what's wrong without what, what's out there.

Yeah. And I, I, to me, I analogize this to why I love DevOps, right? When I was building companies and we were building software, I mean, look, we did a release a year, maybe if we was a good year, we did two releases, and of course we had the old roadmap slide, right?

Show me your roadmap, and I show 'em my roadmap, and then DevOps came and, and, you know, uh, the 10 XA day mm-hmm. Release cycle, right? The very famous presentation that ignited this whole thing.

Why can't we release software 10 times a day? If not, if you're released to, if you're used to relieving, releasing once a year, release once a quarter, that's still four times better than once a year. If you do once a quarter, do once a month, that's three x you do once a month, do once a week, it's four x and now it's everybody release.

We don't even keep track of releases. They, it just, the updates happen automatically release, it's happened automatically. Continuous, it's continuous, continuous Updates.

Well, to me, this is continuous coverage. Mm-hmm. Right?

I I I wanted to ask that, is this the kind of thing where people should leave their dashboard open on the, on the desktop? Should they check it weekly, biweekly, monthly? Because this is getting up to the minute data, isn't it?

It is. Yeah. I mean, do I expect the view of the market landscape to change day in, day out?

No. And, you know, I don't think it would be serving anybody. Well, if it did, right.

You know, um, you know, if our analysis is accurate, it should really change when material market news happens, right? So, you know, take some of the recent acquisitions that have announced, right? Salesforce buying Informatica, Palo Alto buying CyberArk, right?

Those are transformational, you know, changes to that market landscape, right? And, you know, we feel like, you know, buyers don't ignore that news until, you know, kind of the next annual report cycle updates. Yeah.

They're, they're working on that news in real time. And, you know, that's, that's really where we're driving futureum signal is when something materially changes in the market, new products are released, more roadmap information is available, uh, m and a, you know, whatever it might be, um, when momentum shifts in the market, we wanna reflect that, you know, in real time. Absolutely.

So, quarterly updates, you know, would seem very reasonable, I think, at minimum. Um, but you know, it's dynamic to the point where if tomorrow morning some major news gets announced, there's no reason to think by tomorrow afternoon that we couldn't have an updated view, you know, based on what that means for the market. And, you know, what a buyer needs to consider.

I mean, in my mind, Dan also is this is a transition from the advisory market being a services orientated kind of thing, or, you know, you gotta Services to software, right? Yeah. To, to software.

It's a, it's a huge thing. Hey, I, I got a couple questions that I prepared though, and I, I know the answers, you know the answers, but I want our audience to know if you just wanna track a single company, I just wanna see how Salesforce is doing, or Google or whatever does that sort of single company view, right? And, and I, I, I do have some graphics here.

I don't know how it'll play on, on our camera to tell you the truth. They're way too small, but it's a little More dynamic in the future of intelligence platform. But yeah, it still shows up all paper.

Yes. Um, but you know, like a business value index kind of shot, right? Where we, we have one company and, and how it plays in, in, in, you know, the business value, strategic vision go to market ecosystem, business value index innovation and solution capabilities, right?

Just one company at a time. We could look there. Then we have sort of this bubble sort of view if, if you, I think you know what I'm talking about.

Yeah, absolutely. If I could explain kind of the three kind of main Yeah, go ahead. You have Alan.

Uh, so for every vendor we evaluate, you know, we've got kind of five key dimensions we think a buyer really needs to consider. Um, and we really, you know, rate them on each of those dimensions. So you've got a bit of a spider chart that kind of shows, you know, relative strengths and weaknesses at a vendor level, right?

So, you know, if interoperability and, you know, partnering really well within the rest of your IT stack ecosystem is really important to you. You can lean into the vendor who has the most open standards, the most integrations, whatever it might be. If you're incredibly cost conscious, don't need a ton of feature functionality, you may lean into the business value side.

Um, you know, go for somebody who may not be as fully featured, but meets all of your requirements and, you know, has a really easily, you know, easy digest pricing scale, um, and scales up really well. Right? So, you know, I think most of the other alternatives in the market are effectively two dimensional.

You know, we're coming out with something that's five dimensional. Um, so in addition to rating every vendor on those five dimensions, we also kinda show how the market landscape, you know, appears against those five dimensions, is what we call the heat map. And so you'll see mm-hmm.

Across vendor comparison where on each of those five dimensions that we're evaluating, you know, kind of how each vendor scores relative to one or another, which again, you know, everybody cares about something a little bit different, right? We need this contextual awareness when it comes to helping a buyer find the right technology partner. Uh, the, the, there's not one right answer for everybody, right?

We know that every company who's out there competing wins for one reason or another. And what we're really trying to do is to help the buyer to understand here's where each of these companies win so that they can kind of find a supplier who they sit there and say to themselves, well, it seems like they do well with people who look and feel like me, right? So that's where kind of the heat map comes in.

And then Sure. You know, ultimately we kind of lay all this out on, you know, kind of the podium, the hierarchy chart where, you know, you've got kind of bands of performance, you know, from elite all the way down to aspiring vendors within the platform. And then, you know, in addition to that, you know, we also list off a, a very large number of disruptive companies that we're keeping an our eye in this space, right?

Not all of those companies have kind of all of the, you know, technology requirements needed to be considered a, a full, you know, market participant there. But, um, there are vendors who very well could be acquired by the Evaluat. Uh, the vendors that we're evaluating, they very well could be the right fit for you if you've got a more narrow need within that particular market segment.

But, you know, we're also trying to really shine a light on, you know, these are the main players in the market as the ones you should be primarily considering. And here's kind of how to find which one best fits for you, but also here's a list of other up and comers you should really keep your eye on if this is a key part of your technology stack and, you know, a critical, critical technology to driving your business where it needs to go. Very cool.

Dan, Dan, we were lucky enough yesterday, we, we, we had Daniel, Daniel Newman Fu, CEO, on tech drunk gang with us. And, you know, one of the questions I asked him and we got into was when I was, again, building, starting, found co-founding companies, I always felt like we were too small to get the attention of the, some of the giants in the, in this space. And it was too expensive.

It, they priced this out. I, I know we're not releasing pricing here today, but Daniel Newman emphasized that, look, there's, there's packages for companies and users of all levels. Is that true?

Yeah. Important. Daniel and I are a hundred percent aligned on that.

Yes. Uh, I mean, at first I would say, you know, you don't need to be a customer of ours at all to be included in these reports, right? We, we are really trying to call out the vendors that we see as impactful in the market, regardless of whether we work with them or not.

That's what buyers are looking for. Um, you know, buyers don't care what their, a vendor is, a free and group customer are not in their buying decision. I assure you that doesn't play into anybody's calculus, nor should it with any other analyst firm.

Um, but you know, as you said, you know, lots of different entry points, um, you know, smaller companies really require a different solution. And I think we've really tried to, you know, build our product and our offering sets so that, you know, we serve kind of all levels. We serve the technology giants, but we also serve the startup ecosystem really well.

And that's a lot of what we're trying to do with our disruptors list is really, you know, try to shine a light on the companies that are making waves in a particular space. And, um, you know, like I said, I think that, you know, the trend we see in the market is that a lot of those bigger companies that we're kind of fully evaluating as full market participants in the segments we're analyzing, um, you know, a lot of m and a where those up and coming companies are, you know, filling portfolio gaps for those larger companies. Um, so, you know, really trying to, you know, bring, shed a light onto that for our, uh, investor stakeholders as well.

Right. I mean, I think these reports are really trying to serve three primary audiences, the buyer, the vendor, and the investor. And that's important to note too, Dan, it's not just bias vendors.

I mean, they, they, it's part of the business model. Speaking of the business model, we, we could only cover, so, you know, Rome wasn't built in the day. We're gonna build up the coverage areas August 20th out of the shoot.

We come out with intelligent data platforms, correct? Yeah, yeah. Data intelligence platforms.

Absolutely. And then what, what are the, the next areas that we'll be following up with, you know, in fall in the Audience? Yeah, so I think you'll see thematically again, we're really trying to come at it at the platform level.

Um, so, you know, at Gentech AI platforms is on our list, software engineering platforms, uh, you know, cyber, uh, cyber operations platforms. Uh, we're looking at, uh, cloud marketplace platforms. We're looking at sales, marketing and service platforms.

Um, and honestly taking a lot of client feedback along the way, I think there's a lot of interest in potentially looking at observability platforms. Mm-hmm. Hearing from a lot of, you know, a lot of customers and a lot of market participants in that space.

So we've got, uh, like, like you said, about six more planned between, uh, you know, kind of middle and end of September and, you know, aggressively planning out our Q4 roadmap as to where we go next. And, you know, encourage any of the viewers on the program here. You know, if you've got ideas on where we should go, markets that are, you know, undercovered or aren't being covered, well, you know, let us know.

Love to inform Absolute. And that, that's a good segue. Nice show job there for me.

Dan, if you want to get more information, you want sign up early access, give us where you'd like to see us go. It's futurum group slash Signal, right? Is is kind of the homepage for signal Fu com slash signal.

Exactly. You'll see, right. You know, kind of a preview of what it looks like there.

You'll get some info on the methodology, our process, and, you know, the opportunity to sign up and, you know, be amongst the first people to, uh, receive the reports. Excellent. Hey, Dan.

Oh, thanks for joining. Shimmy says today, man, we appreciate you. We're live on YouTube and, and, uh, x we hope you've enjoyed this.

Hey, if you didn't catch the whole thing, we'll be on u excuse me, not YouTube. We're on LinkedIn in next live, but we'll be on YouTube within a few hours. com.

Dan. Oh, I'm excited. I know you are.

You are rocking over. Itm very excited. Can't wait for August 20th where we could show you all of this.

Until then, hey, man, this Shimmy says we'll see you next week.