We provide tech companies with in-depth analytics, strategy consulting and product marketing, helping them to develop digital products that create real value for people and businesses
Our core belief and purpose are simple: AI and information-communication technologies (ICT) in general — despite all the hype — should create real value for people. As analysts, this is our area of expertise. We help technologies address real-world challenges, support a balanced and fulfilling life, foster harmony with the natural environment, and make everyday solutions smarter, more sustainable, and more human-centric.
The first step is always the most critical. That’s why we focus on clear-eyed analytics and pragmatic, achievable strategies. To ensure that an ICT product delivers tangible impact for people and the environment, it is essential to start with a solid foundation: a realistic assessment of market potential, well-defined technical and economic requirements, and the selection of optimal technologies and strategic partnerships.
Here, you’ll find everything you need to bring an ICT product successfully to market — from in-depth market insights and product strategy to financial modeling and Proof of Concept development for innovative products and services.
Team
Alexander Gerasimov
Founder&CEO
IT Business Partner
25+ years of expertise in analytics and ICT product marketing: forming of general vision of innovative products, assessing market potential, optimization of product’s characteristics and business-model for seizing the market potential, establishing cooperation principles of B2B2X value chain contributors.
25+ years of experience in IT infrastructure development and operation. Senior IT Infrastructure Program Manager for the EMEA region with more than 20 years of the experience. More than 100 successfully completed IT Infrastructure Programs (Data Centers, General Purpose Buildings, Smart Buildings, M&A)
Chief Commercial Officer
30+ years of strategic consulting and ICT services sales to Large Accounts in Russia and worldwide
Elena Kuzyakina
Market research
and strategy expert
An expert with over ten years of experience managing strategic marketing and research at major telecom and IT companies (TTK, Rostelecom, Mango Office). For over seven years, she has been implementing full-cycle product marketing at strategic companies and has recognized expertise in developing comprehensive marketing strategies and positioning products in competitive markets.
Who we are
What we
deliver
Clear answers for shadowed markets
Most innovative markets lack direct data. We build custom quantitative models that uncover real market potential, key value drivers, and viable monetization paths
Actionable guidance for early product decisions
Early choices define outcomes. We help teams validate product concepts, size opportunities, and choose the right strategic direction before investing heavily
Research tailored for niche, high-tech markets
We minimize fieldwork by gathering only a small number of targeted expert inputs — not long surveys or generic market reports. This makes our approach effective even in expert-scarce, highly specialized markets
N4A is an
analytics firm
specializing in
emerging
segments of
the global ICT market
We provide intelligence support to developers
of ecosystem software applications and services — the fastest-growing and least-documented part of today’s digital economy
Our team brings 20+ years of experience
working with major clients across CIS and internationally. N4A is led by Alexander Gerasimov, a recognized expert in innovation analytics and quantitative market modeling
Our regional focus
We research globally
with a dedicated focus on regions that have:
Low GDP per capita
Low labor productivity
Limited data transparency
These markets offer significant opportunity for ecosystem services yet remain the hardest to analyze using traditional methods
Why Analysis of Digital Ecosystems Matter
Ecosystem applications and services — from B2B-apps API-interaction to interaction between digital components embedded in physical products — are forming the foundations of a new digital economy where automated interaction occurs between software agents and cyber-physical systems.
Understanding these emerging interaction principles is critical to designing the next generation of successful digital products.
We continuously synthesize insights from our projects and publish them as part of our research agenda in “Patterns” section of our web-site.
Services
High-tech
markets
Green technology markets
Digital
ecosystems
New business-models
ICT
(AI, cloud, cyber-security, Industrial IoT)
Cyber-physical systems (autonomous transport, industrial robots)
BEV and BESS
Lithium products
Clean hydrogen
Carbon contracts
and the transformative role of automation in building cooperative value chains
outcome-based business models
and the economic effects of ICT implementation
Assessment of market potential
System
design
Value
chain
Total addressable market (TAM), Serviceable addressable market (SAM), Serviceable obtainable market (SOM)
Definition of functionality and SLA, components and architecture
B2B2X value chain, business-model, including models of delivery and monetization throughout B2B2X value chain
Proof
of concept
Financial-economic
modelling
Development
of roadmaps
Management of PoCs and piloting projects as a leader of complicated B2B2X value chain
Calculation of the revenue and expense components of the FEM, using the results of the SAM and SOM assessment as the revenue side of the model, and the costs of product development and the revenue distribution structure in the value chain as the expense side of the FEM.
Optimization of long term product evolution route with short-term milestones
Patterns
Some patterns of
digital B2B2X markets development and the
emerging principles of the digital economy
as the result of summarizing our
practical research experience
Sustained inertial growth of digital markets is impossible
Growth potential is always fragmented, and moving from an “established” segment to a new one requires a fundamental change in the product portfolio: functional capabilities, technical implementation, and new delivery and monetization models.
The easiest
segment to monetize
is always
less capable
The easiest segment to monetize is usually the horizontal segment of the largest companies, but it is always the least capable - while moving into broader B2B segments, the number of potential B2B customers grows faster than the decline in per-customer consumption
Outcome/costs
ratio is the key
success factor
of any digital product
The key factor of product/service market success is the ratio between costs (TCO) and economic outcome. Penetration ratio of a product or service always correlates with this ratio, despite the fact that major part of B2B-customers do not make such calculations. Penetration rate is always high when costs fall behind conservatively estimated outcome.
Larger customers get larger per-unite outcome
Volume of per-unite economic outcome derived from use of a digital product depends on the size of a B2B-customer – for large customers per-unite outcome always larger then for SMB
Data volumes and SLA requirements always grow faster then outcome
On the automation route, shifting from “Monitoring as information support for manual control” mode to ”What if” simulation based on digital model of asset and manual control” and then to “Closed loop adaptive automated control” generate X10000 surge of volumes of M2M/IoT data, while economic outcome grows X100.
Even similar digital products have differences in their positioning
Any successful product or service, including basic ones with no functional or industrial specifics - broadband Internet access for instance, is successful in one or several narrow market segments, but not in the whole market. It creates opportunities to transform direct competition (win-lose) strategies into partnership (win-win).
All digital products need complicated value chains: partnership instead of competition
Almost all digital products and services need complicated sustainable value chains based on partnerships. The strategy of direct competition is not viable in long-term – competitors shall seek possibilities to become partners.
Digital products’ value chains must be sustainable
Designing value chain of a product it is essential to ensure real-time win-win outcomes for all participants. Only this approach can guarantee its long-term resilience in an uncertain, dynamically changing business environment, aimed on lowering per-unit cost of the end product’s functionality.
Value chains automated re-balancing is the key to their sustainability
Value chains automated re-balancing calls for introduction of three types of interaction in End-to-End processes of a value chain:
Human — Human
Human — Cyber-system
Cyber-system — Cyber-system
Managed variables instead of constants and non-managed variables
Automated re-balancing of value chains needs broad range of possible scenarios for all participants, therefore all members of a value chain shall transform their processes and organizational structures in order to replace constants into managed variables
News
Announcements
Why the Market Is Stalling N4A’s research points to two key reasons for the weak dynamics: the lack of fully functional Russian analogues of leading global BI and ERP systems (both cloud-based and on-prem), and the growing reluctance of large Russian enterprises to adopt public clouds. Given the dominant role of the Russian market among the three countries analyzed, these factors have a decisive impact on the overall picture. The industry breakdown is also telling. Most consumption of cloud BI/ERP/CRM and accounting systems comes from trade and logistics companies and businesses in consumer services. In these segments, a specific ecosystem-based model has emerged, where a core platform (for example, a marketplace) offers partners not only a storefront but also ready-made business processes and automation tools from its own private cloud—effectively creating “franchising with built-in automation.” Such ecosystem-based automation remains narrow in functional scope and does not even cover the basic needs of small and microbusinesses, let alone more complex companies. Sustainable growth requires mass-market, fully functional next-generation cloud solutions that are not confined to a single ecosystem and allow businesses to build their own process architectures. On the horizon, according to N4A estimates, lies a 17-fold increase in market value—nearly RUB 300 billion in annual revenue—driven by a doubling of the customer base and more than an eightfold increase in average spend. The key driver should be deeper use of functionality, not merely onboarding new companies. However, monetizing this potential within the current product landscape is virtually impossible due to insufficient functional depth and outdated pricing approaches. “The Death of SaaS” and the Chance for a SAP ERP substitution N4A’s conclusion is striking: the simple subscription model of “pay for access to software” has run its course—hence the global discussion about the “death of SaaS” in its classic form. A new model is required, one in which pricing is tied not to the number of users or licenses but to the economic value delivered, with the developer sharing risks and rewards with the customer. In this context, partnerships between BI/ERP/CRM developers and digital ecosystems—already deeply embedded in trade, logistics, and consumer services—appear promising. It is through such cooperation that a “true domestic analogue of SAP” may emerge: not for show, not as a loud brand, but as a demanded, scalable, genuinely cloud-native solution embedded in the real economy rather than in reports.
Coming soon
TBD Webinar
26.01.2026 ComNews WAF and Anti-DDoS in Russia: Sustainable Growth, Strong Positions of Russian Developers, Clear Prospects According to preliminary estimates by N4A, in 2025 consumption of WAF and Anti-DDoS products and services in Russia grew by 19% year on year and reached RUB 11 billion. This is almost five times smaller than the largest segment of the network security market—perimeter protection solutions—which reached RUB 47 billion in 2025. Overall, this 1:5 ratio corresponds to the distribution of stored and processed corporate data between user devices within local perimeters and data centers (both public and private). For many years, Russian developers have held strong positions in the WAF/Anti-DDoS segment, which is why—unlike the perimeter security segment—the scope for import substitution here has been limited. Importantly, the leading positions of Russian vendors were not driven by regulatory preferences, and some of them have been successful in international markets as well. Notably, in this segment both global players and leading Russian vendors predominantly rely on a cloud delivery model and a subscription-based monetization model. As with any cloud service, the key advantages are elasticity and pay-as-you-go pricing based on actual consumption. As a result, unlike perimeter protection solutions, the size of the WAF/Anti-DDoS segment is formed mainly by recurring revenue streams. This benefits customers—whose online applications typically experience steadily growing loads—and also enhances the business stability of providers. According to the N4A forecast, growth rates in this segment are expected to accelerate—from +19% in 2025 to a +25% CAGR in the 2026–2028 period. Both extensive and intensive factors are working in favor of this acceleration. Extensive growth is driven by an increasing number of cloud applications and rising workloads on them. The main driver here is the sustained growth of so-called “tech” businesses—fintech and e-commerce. Intensive growth comes from rising demand for protection due to the increasing sophistication of attacks on online resources. Traditional Anti-DDoS solutions operating at the L4 level have ceased to be sufficient, forcing Anti-DDoS providers to move up to the application logic level (L7). As a result, Anti-DDoS and WAF have effectively merged into a single service for protecting online applications. As digital ecosystems continue to take shape, API protection functionality—so-called WAAF—is also actively developing, and many providers are adding cloud workload protection features to their standard WAF/Anti-DDoS offerings. Overall, we estimate the growth potential of the Anti-DDoS/WAF segment in Russia at RUB 7 billion in additional annual revenue, with most of this potential likely to be monetized in the coming years with minimal enhancements to existing product and service offerings.
Past events
26.11.2025 Join our upcoming N4A webinar "Mass Workforce Shortage — Searching for Tech-Driven Solutions. Hybrid Employment and the Spot Labor Exchange" Across industries, companies are struggling to fill mass positions for months. What’s behind this ongoing shortage — and how can technology help build a more flexible, efficient workforce model? At the webinar, we’ll: - explore the root causes of the systemic talent gap - share real cases of hybrid employment models - present fresh analytics on the Workforce Management (WFM) market - discuss the emerging concept of a spot labor exchange Who should attend: HR Directors, Operations Managers, and IT leaders developing WFM and HRMS solutions. Speaker: Alexander Gerasimov, Founder of N4A and author of the Russian WFM M
15.12.2025 ComNews The period of rapid growth in the NGFW market has come to an end. Alexander Gerasimov, co-founder of the analytics company N4A, believes that the NGFW market has completed its active growth phase: growth slowed from 30% in 2024 to 19% in 2025. For further development, market participants need to change their strategies. Most market players agreed with these conclusions.
Past events
12.11.2025 Close webinar with limited seats "The Russian cybersecurity market is booming. But let’s be honest — is this sustainable growth or just import-substitution hype?" At our upcoming closed session, we’ll dig into the data behind the buzz: - is this a real long-term trend or a temporary spike? - are we building globally competitive products — or just a “domestic digital zoo”? - what are our chances of expanding abroad? We’ll share fresh insights from our new 2025 NetworkSec market study — based on seven years of deep analysis of Russian and global vendors. Here’s what to expect: - real drivers and threats behind market growth - business models that thrive (and those that failed) - competitive landscape: how Russian players stack up globally - practical strategies for scaling in EAEU markets For business leaders and product owners building scalable cybersecurity companies. 30 min of insights + 25 min of open Q&A
Archive of publications
Past events
29.10.2025 “The Death of SaaS: How to Survive in the New Reality” - webinar invitation We’ll have an honest conversation about why the simple subscription-based business model is losing its appeal. What practical steps can companies take to adapt to the changing landscape? — using Russia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan as case studies. Expect insights, data, and lively discussions! We promise — it’s going to be fascinating In the spirit of Halloween, we’ve prepared a “strategic anti-crisis ritual” — an exclusive bonus available only to live attendees at the end of the webinar.