An IDC MarketScape is a vendor assessment that scores suppliers on qualitative and quantitative criteria and shows each one's position in a single graphic. Published excerpts include only the purchasing vendor's profile, so buyers who want the full comparison need to ask IDC for the complete document.
What IDC says it is
IDC's standard description, repeated in vendor-hosted excerpts, says the model gives an overview of the competitive fitness of suppliers in a given market. It uses a scoring method based on both qualitative and quantitative criteria and produces a single graphical illustration of each vendor's position. It compares offerings, capabilities and strategies, and current and future market success factors, and IDC says this gives buyers a "360-degree assessment" of strengths and weaknesses.
I could not fetch a public page that defines the axes, bubble sizes or growth markers in detail. If those matter to you, read them in IDC's own methodology material and the report itself, not in a secondhand summary.
The excerpt rule
The excerpt notice says that per IDC policy, only the Vendor Summary Profile for the purchasing vendor is included in a given excerpt. Profiles for other suppliers require contacting IDC.
This is worth understanding as a buyer. A vendor can legitimately share the page about itself, and the page may be accurate. But an excerpt is a slice. It does not show how the vendor compares with others, which criteria were used for the rest of the field, or what the report says about weaknesses of other suppliers.
How to use an excerpt responsibly
- Note the market name and the year or edition in the title, since the same firm may publish several assessments of adjacent markets.
- Ask the vendor what the report said about limitations, not only strengths.
- Ask whether the full document is available to you through your own IDC access or a licensed copy.
- Check that the market definition matches your need. A report about one kind of service can look relevant to a different one.
What to bring to a shortlist
IDC assessments compare capabilities and strategies, so they are most useful for questions of vendor direction and fit across a market. They are less useful for answering whether a tool finds issues in your language, ecosystem or build system. For that you need a test.
Write down five or six failure cases you care about, such as a transitive dependency in a private registry, and run them on each shortlisted product.
Quick check
Why can I only see one vendor in an IDC excerpt?
Per the IDC policy stated on excerpts, only the Vendor Summary Profile for the purchasing vendor is included. Others require contacting IDC.
Does the public excerpt notice list all scoring criteria?
No. It gives a short description of the model, not the criteria or weights.
Safeguard supports SBOM and dependency scanning plus reachability analysis, which you can run on your own code as one of those failure cases.
Sources
Last reviewed: 19 October 2026.
