The Gartner bias issue has popped up again – where are the aliens?

CarterLusher has leaped to the defence of Gartner following a post by Tom Bittman.

Of more interest to me is the comments thread in Tom’s post, regarding the fact that the market is still confused regarding this issue, no matter how many times an Analyst will scream about their integrity.

There are unscrupulous sales people out there at all analyst firms, not just Gartner (though as a big one they get bashed a lot!).

The problem is that these sales people have helped construct the belief (however misguided) that you can essentially buy your place in an MQ, and that belief will take a lot of swaying otherwise (Belief, as Darwin would attest to, is a very hard thing to break).  These firms are now in a position similar to the US government in denying that there are any alien landings, but hiding access to any proof or disproof of such in the ‘interests of security’ (I hold no firm belief either way…)

The answer is transparency of funding and process.

This is why the smaller, more open boutique firms such as Freeform and Redmonk are winning awards voted on by users such as the IIAR awards and are punching well above their weight.  They rapidly gain trust by never having lost it in the first place.

What do you think Gartner should do?  What would persuade you that their output is unbiased?