February 9th, 2006
Information Week: Credibility Of Analysts
An interesting subject that has been discussed
here in the past. Information Week talks to the “big guns”
of the analyst world: IDC, Gartner, Forrester. There is a smattering
of discussion about boutique analyst firms, but there are so many that
it would be tough ground to cover.
It’s an interesting article, but I think it is difficult to apply a single
lens to all analyst firms. Burton Group, for example, doesn’t do
vendor-sponsored work, as Peter
O’Kelly notes on his blog.
Other analysts exclusively do so, so-called “white paper for
hire” analysts. This class of analyst doesn’t get much attention
in the Information Week article, yet I think it’s more relevant for readers
to be aware of.
Predicting tech trends is notoriously
difficult, and no research firm is perfect in its advice. But their motives
must be beyond reproach. Gartner VP Larry Perlstein tackled the pay-for-play
question on the company’s blog. “Aside from the occasional comment
on a blog or backroom chatter, we have not had any vendors complain to
the office of the ombudsman directly since the office opened in September
2004,” Perlstein wrote. “So my message is, if anyone believes
that they know of a legitimate issue, please step forward regardless of
your client status.”
The article also doesn’t really
tackle this subject — track record. The article quotes a reader
saying that some analysts erroenously (and egotistically) see their role
as “market makers” rather than trend watchers — I agree completely.
It would be very interesting for those analysts that have been around
a long time to self-publish a scorecard, and one that is somehow indepedently
auditable. I know that, for example, I still think about Tom Austin/Gartner’s
“Great Train Wreck” report on the messaging market in 1996 –
which was remarkably prescient for the time. Can’t say that I have
seen the same from certain others.
Link: Information
Week: Credibility Of Analysts
>
Originally by Ed Brill from Ed Brill on February 7, 2006, 11:51am
