Analystanalyst’s Weblog

Duncan Brown (who I have read frequently and respect) has passed some interesting comment on my blog.

I love his comment: “So here’s a question: what would happen to your organisation if you didn’t pay the money? What’s the bottom line impact of cancelling your Gartner subscription?”

This is exactly what I am talking about, AR is obviously biased towards the use of analysts as it keeps them in money.  The self-fulfilling prophesy circus of the analyst community is daunting to many.

To answer a couple of your points Duncan, I am not resentful - I am a cynic (and yes I do currently work for a vendor, but have been an end-user and my job is to talk to end-users).  I don’t ‘hate’ analyst firms and analysts, I know some very good analysts whose opinion I value - I just am very cautious.  I want things to get better and more open.

Best quote I had recently from a salesman from a large analyst house was he asked me “How do you know what your customers are thinking?”, the beautifully succinct answer to him from my colleague was “We talk to them”.  This salesman is still struggling to show us how his firm can add value to our organisation, apart from the fact that we can appear in more magic quadrants…

My anonymity is for personal reasons, and allows me to hopefully speak freely.

I want to use this blog to ask tough questions, and get vendors, end-users and analysts to look at themselves and ask themselves some tough questions too…

I want to talk to other end-users/vendors that have used you before.

Why?  Because I don’t trust what you say and need to validate it but can’t because there is no analyst of analysts, no reference guide.

Your big name just isn’t enough for me.

Show me where you got something right in the past.

So can you tell me who to call to tell me it’s OK to trust you?

Is this the case?

Clearly Quadrants and Waves help with drawing up shortlists of vendors, but surely some good solid references are gold.

I wouldn’t buy into anything without a good solid reference on the product and the vendor, or just the vendor if the product is brand new.

But how do we skip the quadrant? The whole IT vendor org seems so hung up on it, yet most people see through them pretty quick. Vendors get damned if they put up the quadrant in their pitch as it is cheesy, and when people don’t put up a quadrant people get suspicious. Is this really the way to do things?

From an end user perspective we skip the quadrant by talking to someone knowledgeable in that space up front (those people are difficult to find, see earlier posts), and as a vendor you should start talking references.

Ultimately in this world we buy from people, not organisations and it comes down to one simple word - SERVICE.

Where’s the quadrant for customer service?

Robin Bloor has a great guide on how to deal with IT Analysts if you are a vendor.

Does anyone know of a similar guide for end users?

This is exactly what this blog is about, hopefully I can help continue this conversation

I like to think that by starting this site I have got some people thinking…

You tell me that for money you can come and tell me all about how my competitors do things.

You tell me that for money you want to come and talk to me about how I do things.

You tell me “We don’t sign NDAs” but will have discretion.

I don’t trust you.

Tell me why I should trust you?

OK, so I found you - but how do I tell you apart?

My last post sparked some discussion both on and off this blog, but google searching discussions aside (see comments to previous post) I did find some and it leads on to this next point.

As an analyst firm how do you differentiate yourself?  What makes you different from the others?  How do you express that to prospective clients?

If you are a small niche player, how do you express that?  Why should I pick you over the big boys?

If you are Gartner or IDC, why should I spend my money with one of you over the other?

What qualifies any of you to claim to be ‘experts’ and how can you show me that?

If you are in the industry, mentally step outside and take a look, it’s not very clear at all what these firms all actually do.  Don’t forget, it’s my money you want…

OK, so I picked a ‘hot topic’.

Unified Communications (Microsoft keep telling me it’s ‘big’).

Imagine I work for a business that is looking at UC and I want to find out who to spend my money with if at all. I want to talk to an expert.

Alternatively I am a vendor who wants to know who to brief on my new product line and possibly spend money with.

So I search on Google for “Unified Communications Analyst“

I get (your results may vary) in the following order:

• A job advert
• A 2005 report on Mobile messaging
• A CW article about some research by Canalys (what’s that name all about???) on UC for SMBs
• A Nokia press release
• A ZDNET article about MS scaring Cisco and quoting Jan Dawson of Ovum
• An article from 2005 quoting Yankee group
• A CXO Europe page that mentions some analysts from Wainhouse, Forrester and IDC
• An article about Nortel and MS from 2006
• Another job advert

So, are Canalys the best guys to tell me about Unified Communications? Does Jan Dawson really know what he’s talking about (his bio makes me think so, but it’s on the Ovum site…)? Who are Yankee group? What is that CXO Europe page about (is it an ad to draw vendors to advertise)?

I’m confused (and before you ask, I don’t really care about UC, it’s the first thing that came to mind).

Where can I go to get the answers to those questions? Who can help me find an analyst?

If you are an analyst specializing in Unified Communications you should be concerned as I can’t find you.

If you help people find analysts, how do I find you?

So, I have been told that someone tried this before and for whatever reason tailed off.

I sincerely hope that I don’t tail off, and this guy was focused on Gartner. Some of the early posts are quite interesting, especially the one here on Magic quadrants.

There are other sites that watch or have watched analysts (ARmadgeddon and others) but I really want to avoid rants. I want opinion and guidance.

I (of course ) intend to be different and gather together as much intel as I can. Ultimately this will lead to more than just a blog, possibly a wiki-type thing. Who knows?

Seth Godin’s post today is pretty good when you read it while thinking about the analyst world from the consumer perspective (end-user and vendor).

Total and utter minefield.

As Seth says, people will tend to go on lists and recommendations when the choice is too great. Maybe that’s why they go for Gartner, IDC since they are names they have heard of (kind of like buying name-brands for anything really) whereas a smaller, boutique firm may be right up their street (e.g. Freeform, MWD).

But where do I go to see the lists and recommendations? There must be something.

Where do I go to find someone to tell me that the guy at Big-name analyst inc. doesn’t have a clue about this space, and only picked it up by default (I know of one case where this is fact) and that I should go and speak to Dave at Okey-Dokey analysts as he has worked in this area for 20 years?

This kind of info must exist, please people, guide me to the finite.