Certainly made me laugh out loud.  I think this sums up vendor AR very well and has tickled the ribs of many of my friends…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjG8KivYFZ0

This gives both credence to the weight that people (however misguidedly) put on the MQs, but also brings them into question.

This may explain why noticeably Gartner analysts at conferences and online have been de-stressing the importance of MQs and how they are only a guide…

Hearing is this Friday, will be interesting to see how this one pans out…

EDIT: Added a link to great piece of writing by Dave Kellogg : http://marklogic.blogspot.com/2009/10/gartner-sued-over-magic-quadrant-for.html

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?

I’m back for good reason, it is fantastic to see some analysts seeing through other people’s self-created hype.

In this post, Neil highlights how disconnected from reality some people at Gartner have become, and more than that, Dale comes up with a classic comment.

Emergent Architecture?

In these tough times, it seems that people are inventing more ‘new terms’ than ever to capture the attention and conference dollars that are getting increasingly scarce.

Here Carterlusher shows the transcript of some tweeting by Gartner ‘Analyst’ French Caldwell.

The article shows that Magic Quadrants are not based (as you may think) on the analyst doing active research as to the latest new technologies/companies in the marketplace and cool trends etc.  Oh no, you guessed it, they are based entirely on who has the biggest/best AR.

These guys have become so arrogant now that they think that they can sit back and people will come to them and they no longer have to do ‘research’ or real ‘analysis’ – just collate questionnaire answers and build MQs / form ‘informed’ opinions based on that.

Yet more indication that this is a self-serving parasitic structure offering no real independent ‘balanced’ opinion.

I’m done with you guys – not good PR for Gartner at all…

http://duckdown.blogspot.com/2009/02/how-come-redmonk-is-only-analyst-firm.html

No matter how many times you tell me how much a client pays you doesn’t affect your opinion, I’m still going to feel like what you say is a little ‘dirty’…

http://blogs.gartner.com/andreas_bitterer/2008/12/28/setting-the-record-straight/

Gartner (amongst others) are cancelling conferences, summits, symposia, you name it.

Why?

Times are tough, people are looking to save money and your ROI is incredibly obtuse.  You have become irrelevent to core business.

If you are/want to be a successful analyst, cut through the crap and start telling people how to save money and jobs, NOW.

Start talking about the techniques and technologies that will make a difference, and do it now, in clear, plain English.

I’m not interested in cool, sexy new technology that will pay back over the next 3-5 years.

Running a paid conference in 2009 is tough, very tough.  Budgets are tighter than they have been for a long time, and fripperies such as conferences are right out I’m afraid.

If however, you turn up on my doorstep to tell me about some really cool stuff I can do to become more efficient, fast – then I’m more than happy to listen.

P.S. – Cloud is NOT the answer to everything…

I’m back at another analyst conference (Burton Catalyst in Prague) and again I am so far underwhelmed.

Just sat through a market overview of a particular market, supposedly identifying the key players.  Yet again the same old ‘big names’ showed up on the slides, missing out several other companies with not so big names that I happen to know actually have more revenue in this particular space.  Also certain smaller players were called out for completely the wrong part of their portfolio.  A massively blinkered view of a space they claim to be experts in.

It was a self-indulgent discussion between their own analysts on stage that again proved to be outstandingly content-light.

So in the first session, Burton have completely eroded all confidence I could have had in their ‘analysis’.

How did they choose the ‘case studies’ they are going to present, were they based on how much the vendor spent with them?

If I was an end-user in the audience I have just been misguided and am missing out on some of the new and innovative stuff that I paid a lot of money to learn about.

Am I really going to be interested in their view from now on?

Am I naive or are the people who make their decisions based on the opinion of one analyst naive?