I’d guess the Gartner analyst is appreciative of his post being shown because where he’s from they’d moderate/censor that type of thing.

I have already listed 5 areas where I think you are just plain wrong. But one more is to bundle all analysts that have or still work for Gartner as “non-experts” in their fields. All 600+ of them apparently.

I expect if you are right then those 10,000 client interactions and 200,000 one-on-one client discussions are a thing of the past and they will all just go away. If the advice was not of any value they would not be taking the time. I can assure you there are thousands of C-levels, including CEOs that interact with Gartner regularly.

And if you are trying to be different, then your website surely does not show it:

From the front page of ESG:
–IT Professionals gain clarity and understanding
–Count on ESG for straight talk to The Media
–Technology Companies rely on our guidance
–Our 360° view is sought by Investment Pros

From the front page of Gartner:
–We provide IT Professionals with the insight they need to succeed.
–You can access Gartner’s expertise in a variety of ways to help you make the right decisions about technology solutions, align your IT initiatives with business objectives, and connect with industry peers and best practices.
–Gartner is the IT Professional’s best first source for addressing virtually any IT issue

If you cant differentiate on first impressions, then your messages are wrong. Perhaps this is the same reason you had issues when talking to a Gartner analyst.

Anyway, thanks for posting my comment and thanks for the reply. Happy marketing.

Conversely, outside of yourself, why didn’t anyone who was receiving legitimate value from Gartner come forward? Why didn’t any user or vendor anonymously come forward to say “hey, that might be true elsewhere, but I love my Gartner analyst and trust them with guidance for critical decisions I need to make.”? No one. I haven’t had anyone (until now) defend the value received from Gartner. Not one. The closest thing to a supporting argument came from one end-user who basically said that all analysts suck and no real user would base any decision on anything anyone of us published or says.

Why has no one jumped on Gartner’s side of this? Do you think they are afraid of me? Are they concerned that I might use my absurdly limited power to somehow subvert them if they stood up for their relationship with Gartner? First, like your comment, I will post it. Second, I am GLAD when people get legitimate value, not mad. Gartner’s ability to drive value to our common customer has no bearing on me – other than anything that helps an ESG client out is ok in my book. We don’t compete, regardless of your thoughts. I challenge you to find any common customer who really thinks we do. Gartner and ESG are not used in the same way, by the same people, even within the same customer. For what it’s worth, I’m also jealous of IDC’s power – and guess what, while we provide research, we don’t compete with them either. As with Gartner, it would be a fools game. We either do something different, or dilute ourselves. I might be a jerk, but I’m not that dumb.

If you think for a minute that there are real CEO’s who are on the phone with a Gartner analyst for 30 minutes for any reason other than “face time” or “penance” you are nuts. If you believe that those same CEO’s count on that precious time for actual insight that leads them to make actual business decisions based on those conversations, you are delusional. I challenge you to name one. Big or small – name just one. If you can tell me how Joe Tucci or Dan Warmenhoven or Larry Ellison ever took ONE single action directly based on intelligence and guidance received on one of these calls, I’ll shout it from the top of this blog! Pick a small CEO (but an actual legitimate business person), same deal. In ten years and a thousand companies, we just haven’t seen it. Could it happen outside my purview? Absolutely. Probably not much, but it absolutely could.

Further, IN MY SPACE, I challenge you to find any individual or team of Gartner analysts that are more knowledgeable or bring more “business” value to the table than an ESG analyst (value determined by the customer for making BUSINESS decisions). If they existed, I’d hire them. If I could I’d show you the pile of resumes we’ve collected from those experts over the years, and I assure you that you would find the cream of the Gartner crop among them. It isn’t because we can’t afford them that they don’t work here. It’s because what they might be great at is not what we do.

If you take the time to re-read my post, I think you’ll find that many of the things you accuse me of, or contend I am wrong about, are well covered – including my envy. I’m enormously envious of Gartner’s success and power.

If you have any specific areas where you feel I’m just plain wrong, I welcome you bringing them up. Thanks for taking the time. Steve

1. Most Gartner analysts are required to do phone calls with clients. They are typically 30 minutes a time and most of them are with C-level’s (CEO, CIO, CTO). So the statement that “There are no CEOs who call on Gartner for advice as to how to run their business.” is completely wrong. I previously did between 5-8 of these calls a day, nearly every day for 5+ years. Some were for R&D purposes also, understand what different markets needed in particular and developing a product adjustment or change to fit the market. The company size ranged from small to very large. Many product managers are also making these calls to understand how better to address markets and how better to compete against their competition in different markets. As a former analyst, this was one of my greatest tools for gaining knowledge also. What better way to understand market trends than talking to the leading people directly responsible for different strategic parts of key IT businesses. What is sad about this service is that many subscribe to it, but fail to use it. Those that did use it, used it over and over. And those that used it were easier for the sales people to get renewals from because they got better value out of it than just simply reading a research report. Each year, Gartner has over 10,000 client interactions with organizations world-wide, 200,000 one-on-one client discussions and 12,000 vendor briefings (source: http://www.gartner.com/technology/why_gartner.jsp) So either they are lying (which I know for a fact they are not) or someone is getting value.

2. You may argue that the advice is not of value, and that fees are paid only for “mafia” type reasons. But if this was the case, you would not get companies and individuals lining up for Gartner conferences which are outside of this. The above mentioned 200,000 one-on-one client discussions happen at these events. People talking to people.

3. Gartner does not charge for vendor briefings. You simply have to go through the right process, fill out the forms and which analysts (if you know the appropriate ones) you wish to talk to and a time will be allocated. You get about 30 minutes, sometimes an hour if you have your act together and your story is compelling. Not only that, when a research report is written that includes a vendor, each vendor is sent a copy of the report ahead of time to ensure factual correctness. If they fail to respond, or respond with non-factual information (i.e. “I disagree because we are better”) then that is their own fault. Every research report that I ever wrote that included a vendor went through this process and a report could not be published without the vendors response or a period of absence of to a response.

4. With respect to the MQ, yes, it’s a great marketing tool. But at the same time, its not just throwing a dart at the grid. A considerable matrix is built out of different criteria, which is then used to place the dot on a X-Y basis. Each point is debated fiercely between many analysts. At least that was the case whenever I was involved in a MQ. Yes, this is still subjective, but it’s the collective opinion on numerous analysts who determine each point, which when added up determines where the dot is placed. Its not a subjective single point of “I think I will put the dot here”.

5. With respect to expertise, at least during my time there, I was surrounded by some of the most talented industry experts I have ever met. People that went through the ranks of corporate and did hard time, then were recruited into the role at Gartner. The interview process alone is very grueling. With panels of experts ensuring you know your stuff, can talk about it properly and with authority, not shooting from the hip or getting help from others. Even a research paper has to be written as part of the process and then you must stand up and defend it against a panel. This is tough and many don’t make it through the interview stages.

6. With respect to distrust, look at the history between Oracle, Microsoft and Gartner. These are some big spending clients and yet still much negative information is published. As former lead analyst for Microsoft is Asia, I wrote many negative articles and was backed fully by management. I also wrote positive articles when they deserved it. It did not make me popular in Microsoft, but it got me their respect and the right people to talk to. The one thing that I loved when I worked there was being able to write my thoughts. Gartner does not do take money for research to be written. Those companies who buy larger subscriptions get more analyst time, but that does not mean a research report. That means more time to discuss product and strategy. If the analyst finds it relevant to Gartner clients (let us not forget that’s who pays a lot, not the vendors only, end users of IT), then a report may be written.

Now to “my opinion”.
At the end of the day, market trends cannot be based on fact. They can only be based on an interpretation of the facts as they have yet to happen. Even what happened in previous years is often modeled for key parts of the market as the data may or may not be available. But this is done with a great degree of thought and process. But Gartner is not about fact, it is about advice, whether written or verbal. From my perspective, it’s a well educated opinion offered in the form of advice based on industry experience, the research of many and discussions with industry peers. An individual is free to take or ignore the advice, or for that matter even challenge it.

As a former Gartner analyst, I made many predictions on what I felt different markets would do – these were based on my opinion and derived from experience and the facts at hand. Many of these predictions came true, many did not. But they were predictions that were scrutinized by many other analysts before they were ever published. These analysts are in a position of trust because of the Gartner brand. As such, they do not want to lose that trust. Analysts that are bluffing it do not last long. Both Gartner and the industry are not that foolish. No substantive decision is made on a MQ alone, but it certainly helps save a lot of time for many. If the companies don’t promote their products, their messages and their capability well, there is probably a reason they are not on the MQ. Each time I was involved in the MQ, I talked directly to the vendors on the issues and ranking points.

If Gartner is as bad as you are portraying them, then that would mean that the industry is fools for allowing them to have this position and then continuing to buy. Gartner is not the one making a choice. The customer is making a choice to pay for Gartner. Sure the big guys like MS spend a lot of money and of course they get analyst time because that gives them the appropriate level of access via their subscription to talk to and provide information. But those same opportunities are available to smaller companies, whether they are customers of Gartner or not. In fact of Gartner’s customers are pure consumers of the research, not vendors at all. I live in Thailand today and there are a lot of companies here that are using Gartner via a paid subscription. This includes banks, airlines and others. They have no reason to buy a Gartner subscription if they did not get value. The same goes for companies in many other markets.

Companies that want to influence Gartner analysts don’t need to buy the research, they need to get organized. Have an analyst relations strategy, make regular contact, not just via email, but schedule briefings. Build a relationship with the analysts. Understand what they are looking for. Don’t hype your product, get to the meat. The number of hype sessions that did not have meat behind them when I was doing vendor briefings was incredible. The down to earth guys that had solid product, solid strategy, spent the time and energy to understand what the analysts were seeking, not ramming marketing propaganda down their throats got the respect of the analysts and got the messages across to them that needed to be. Saying “my product is great” is not helpful. Let the analyst decide if it is great or not. Show your product, not your ego and you will go a long way further. But if you can’t convince the analyst that it’s great, don’t blame them, take a look closer to home. Maybe it is great, but your messaging did not convey it enough or maybe your opinion of your own product is inflated. Steve, if you were able to take something up to the Gartner ombudsman and it was factual not just hype, then I believe it would have been acted on. I had several vendors challenge statements I made, including some of the biggest, the ombudsman took if very seriously, but each time while the vendor thought “they were right” failed to offer anything other than opinion or disagreement with the analyst and other analysts opinions. Each research report goes though many stages of approval and review. It’s not the better product, it is the entire offering, company, strategy and more. You had a chance at vendor review to correct those issues. That is the reality. And while I don’t agree with the response you say you were given, I personally would have never said that, many don’t make it on the MQ at all and any position on the MQ is still better than not being on. It shows that you have some influence in the market, but if the bottom left, shows that you need to get more serious about certain aspects of the business. In many cases a niche player was a great fit for many businesses. But even with great product if a company is not competitive on support, able to articulate a clear strategy, show the right case studies, unable to get beyond the hype then they are ranked lower. Some of the MQ that I partook in the analysis on had 150+ fields of criteria. Just because you don’t know them does not mean they don’t exist.

At the end of the day, it is expert advice that people subscribe to Gartner for most. That advice comes in the form of analyst opinions. The bio of each analyst is on the Gartner site. If you don’t think they are qualified, don’t take their advice.

I will probably get flamed for this comment. But it seems that there are a lot of “research firms” that are willing slap Gartner for their size while at the same time saying they respect the company. The author of this article is a good example. Perhaps as a researcher you should check facts a little more before publishing. This seems a little too heavy on the envy site to be credible. I am not saying Gartner is perfect mind you. Every company has its flaws. But many described here are simply factually incorrect. My opinion is that this entire “anti-Gartner rant” is little more than a marketing ploy from a “theoretically” competitor.

Yes, Gartner does hold a role of dominance. Maybe they deserve it, maybe they used to deserve it, maybe they don’t today. That is a point for the end user IT companies to decide and for the moment they are still buying. Vendors pay money, but a huge number of customers get nothing from Gartner but opinionated advice and are not vendors.

I am several years out from Gartner and still have a lot of respect for their internal processes and thoroughness. I am not a client, shareholder and have no relationship to Gartner at all other than remaining in occasional touch with a bunch of great people that I still consider friends, many who have also gone out into the world after doing their time at Gartner. I left after I decided I wanted to grow beyond the Gartner shores and get beyond advice and go back to being in the field. I started my own company like you, not my first. This is not uncommon with many of these great people that you have decided to stereotype as 650 “non-expert” analysts. And thus my reason for replying to your blog. I too was one of these people that you bundled in this group not so long ago. So yes, this is personally insulting and insulting to all current and former Gartner analysts. If I and all others you bundle together are not qualified just because we worked at Gartner, then neither are you my friend. As you said “I know what a skunk smells like”. Again to quote you “Is perpetuating and even actively attempting to foster the perception of expertise where little or none actually exists” Take a look in the mirror and read your own bio. (http://www.enterprisestrategygroup.com/steve-duplessie/)

Marketing speak is easy. Steve, your own bio has plenty. Saying you are respectful and then going out on a full out attack that is based in many parts on non-factual information shows just a little bias don’t you think? If you are the professional that you claim to be, you would not go on the attack like this, you would show what you have, not what they have. The reality is that this is ESG is a competitor to Gartner, albeit a smaller one, and this is a nice bit of marketing showing your own opinion on Gartner, more than on the case at hand, in order to get some attention to the ESG website and your blog. Meanwhile a captive audience of your own customers for the most part who read your blog respond in the comments. The irony is that there are so many factual errors in this blog article, yet it is entitled “the bigger truth”

Thank you for having the courage to openly discuss one of the IT industry’s biggest pain points.

I agree with your concerns. In my opinion and experience with Gartner vendors that do not pay them, ask for their opinion and “court” their analysts are forever doomed in their respective MQ’s.

Technology blogs and social tools combined with industry experts who can add relevant opinions to the conversation are absolutely where the market is headed. Vendor-neutral firms that can provide data and informed opinions will emerge as the market leaders.

I have interviewed higher education leaders for many years; and more and more often I am hearing that they are dropping their subscriptions. Vendors I work with are also telling me that they are reducing their spend in 2010. A “consumer reports” model is emerging and technology and business innovators are at work to support the reality.

Vicki Tambellini
The Tambellini Group
edu1world.org

I’d also like to point out that an analyst is a “made or fade” kind of career based on diplomacy and tact. The “hands on guy” not so much as a matter of fact I think the standard blunt and harsh on most trench dweller’s resume.

I’ve briefed analysts at Gartner focusing on 2 areas of the storage industry. After 7+ years, one is still a clueless idiot in her field of ‘expertise’. She truly doesn’t get it and everyone in the industry knows it. The other is so arrogant and rude that they make my blood boil, even telling me that my terms for my technology were WRONG, and here are their terms that MUST be used. Didn’t matter that the industry wasn’t using those terms, and never has.

If I need #s, I go to IDC. I believe their research methodology and presentation of data is far superior.

If I need advice, feedback or reviews, I’ll go to ESG and your peers that employ knowledgeable, experienced people who can give me the real feedback I need to set my strategy, pricing, positioning, etc.

ZL won’t win, for all the points you and other mentioned. What’s awesome about it is that someone is finally opening up the flood gates for the long overdue reality check of what Gartner has really become.

Here’s my take, nobody who knows anything about IT would pay any attention to Gartner anyway, the Magic Quadrant is uni-dimentional focussed on solving a particular silo of technology problem. Enterprise IT guys have a completely different focus – on Business issues and business problems. CIOs look for three key measures when considering technology: – Business Risk, Business Agility (Cycle Time) and Business Cost.

In my career I probably spent a few more billions of dollars on IT than the average and I can honestly say that I never paid any attention at all. Magic Quadrants just don’t help with any of that so are more important to vendors as bragging rights than useful to buyers.

Steve

I’ve been on both sides of aisle and cannot imagine that IT professionals are that influenced by Gartner. No offense to ESG et al but no analyst does. It is helpful information, especially if you have a “been there done that” analyst, but nothing more. So, if Gartner is but a shadow of former self then ZL is especially off base.

Here’s a challenge: all analysts go to your clients and ask to see their purchase decision matrices (they have them) and see how prominent a position Gartner or any firm has.

Think combining Consumer Reports w/traditional consulting. A low annual fee from those interested in knowing works, combined with experts in the technology on our end. Instead of the traditional consulting model (which of course, I know very well) where you charge one company $50K just to give them that answer (which I did a lot at my former employer), we charge 50 companies $1K and give them all the same answer. One of the secrets of consulting is that everybody asks the same questions.

Customers will have access to experts in their subscribed fields, and they’ll be able to ask what I would call “billable questions” of them if they agree to have their questions anonymized and published back out to the populous. (We’ll, of course, have private, custom services available for discounted rates as well.)

One key, though, is NO vendor money, which is what we get from Consumer Reports. They accept no advertising and neither will we. I know that there are people out there that will pay for real, unbiased information. We just need to find them.

At its core, it cannot be debated that in some circles, Gartner holds a significant amount of influence. I would argue that the exclusivity of this influence is waning, thanks to the growth of competitive analyst firms (IDC, ESG, etc.) and the growth of peer to peer media, but there will always be shops that give the magic quadrants and other Gartner material significant credence. Vendors, typically those who provide Gartner the most income, and coincidentally perform the best in the reports, are happy with their position and will argue its accuracy. Those who pay less, have smaller share and lower marks, may be happy to be included, but know they can never crack “the upper right”, so they utilize other data to present worth and value.

Putting aside the “pay for positioning” argument, there is also the “pay for citation” and “review all mentions” policy that is especially frustrating. Assuming that ZL were to achieve elite “upper right” status with Gartner, they would need to first, become a client to gain access to the report, swear on the dotted line that the report would not be distributed, and then, if they wanted to mention said report, they would need to run all potential public mentions by Gartner, who is notorious for editing every word in releases and collateral.

That’s why most people refer to Gartner’s copyright squad as the “Gartner Police”. It’s not the mafia, but it’s something, indeed.

I personally believe, not speaking for any relationships I have with vendors, past or present, that the value of these studies and charts is decreasing. I believe that the best IT shops will discover potential vendors based on their own research and word of mouth, and do the necessary testing and compares prior to making purchasing decisions. But aggregate data from IDC, Gartner, ESG, or any other firm is something that IT vendors cannot do on their own – and everybody loves PowerPoint slides that show growth in their market (as validated by Analyst XX from Firm YY). That sheer data crunching and year over year number charting is hard to replace.

The value Gartner DOES add is their communication to keep executives in the loop on warnings and awareness for certain technologies. Anyone who has attended an exec level tech expo/conference has had buzz word poisoning. Every year there’s a new list of 10 or so hot new technologies (this year seems to be all about the cloud). Gartner does a good job quelling the reckless drive for technologies like this in places it’s simply unjustifiable.

Another solid point they do is price checking. They’re a trusted source of purchasers willing to go out and grind the sales reps down for you. Most of the time they’re pretty close to what you can find on your own if you have a decent relationship with your vendor.

On one hand I feel bad for the IT guys who used the MQ to justify their decision and who subsequently got fired, but on the other hand I don’t. If you use Gartner (or me) as an excuse to be lazy, you get what you deserve. If you count on any “expert” for actual guidance, then you deserve better – certainly better than this kind of b.s.

In May of this year, Gartner published its MQ on Security Information and Event Management (SIEM). One of the vendors in the desired upper right hand quadrant was Cisco with its Monitoring, Analysis, and Response System (MARS) product. This struck me as odd since I’d be hearing for a while that Cisco was not keeping up with the competition on product updates, angering customers and alienating the salesforce.

If I knew that MARS was falling way behind, my feeling was that Gartner must also have known this.

In October of this year, roughly 5 months after the SIEM Magic Quadrant, Gartner issues a research note alerting customers that Cisco was putting MARS on maintenance and would no longer support 3rd party devices. As such, Gartner told its customers to plan on migrating to another enterprise SIEM platform.

To me, this is an example of the questionable nature of the Gartner MQ. How could Cisco get a top position if everyone knew that MARS had become a second-tier product at best? How could Gartner come back 5 months later and reverse its position (note that it never mentioned its SIEM MQ in its October research note)?

If I purchased MARS based upon the Gartner SIEM MQ, I would be extremely angry and would at least explore legal recourse. Gartner is in an enviable position where it makes a lot of money on its opinion (i.e. MQ), keeps its methodology secret, and somehow avoids any responsibility for bad calls. Even organized crime figures go to jail or get “whacked” now and then.

Seems like everyone would be happy then. Hmmm.

The company I’m starting, http://www.truthinit.com is looking to fill the void you’re talking about. Our purpose in life is to help companies know what products actually work and which ones don’t — which ones are good for certain purposes and not for others. We’re just getting started and are currently in beta, but that is my goal. If you want a MQ based on goodness-knows-what, go to Gartner. If you want to know what actually works, come to Truth in IT, Inc.

I completely appreciate the CYA point. That could very well be the value to the end-user. However, it doesn’t mitigate the issue if covering your butt (CYB) means you rely on complete horseshit from a 3rd party.

Finally, you bring up a really great point in “where else can end-users go?” to get legitimate information. I contend that there is so much crap out there, of unknown or cloudy origin and expertise, that sooner or later people who need real input are going to pay for it. I hope I’m around when that happens!!! Cheers.

People that long ago when we were on the customer or vendor side of the table as Gartner customers saw as being in tune.

However lately, Gartner appears to be trading more on reputation, hiring more sales people to beef up their sales per analyst ratios at a time when others are beefing up their knowledge workers/teams capabilities.

I too am envious of the Gartner model from a business perspective.

After all, if charging the amount they do per customer or vendor access to an analyst for a briefing or call or interview, I would have a fleet of high-end sports cars including one for each my dogs.

Maybe that sums up the whole story.

That is, being a public company, there is more emphasis on sales revenue per head, thus the need for story tellers to propel the myth of the value, drive margins.

However what’s next then, outsource the G2 gathering and analysis to other third parties?

Hmm, maybe that fleet of sports cars is not that far out of reach!

Cheers gs

Let’s take your mafia comparison – there has to be a market. The end users are complicit in handing the keys of the kingdom to Gartner. And so are the vendors.

Someone once said that special knowledge and information – something that “I” know that you don’t – even the implication of that insight – is very powerful.

Where can IT professionals go to get relevant information to make buying decisions? There is no gold standard for this – there is no ultimate source. So they go to Gartner, the trade press, other analysts, bloggers and their channel partners. They don’t go just Gartner but they are the biggest voice in the IT industry. And they don’t just go to these sources to make their decisions – they often use this content to justify decisions they already made. One IT professional said to me that sometimes when his boss asks why he bought a particular solution, he shows them various analyst reports and articles. He called it his CYA reports.

Vendors are complicit as well. Sure they complain when they aren’t in the Magic Quadrant but you know all of them use Gartner and IDC research to show investors and potential customers how big and important their markets are.

On another note – regardless of whether ZL wins or not – someone is challenging the game and I admire that.

Our IT world is shifting and I don’t think the trade press or the analyst community is prepared for these changes And yes, it will take some time for this to occur but we are clearly in the midst of this transition. It isn’t just Gartner that should be concerned about this but all press and analysts.