
Reality Check: What does Gartner really do? - naish
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2008/pulpit_20080516_004925.html
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smanek
They are useless.

I remember a while ago I was reviewing whole disk encryption products for a
large financial services firm. Gartner had a strong admonishment against PGP's
product because "Pretty Good Privacy" didn't sound very professional and the
company wasn't very 'mature'.

They never mentioned that PGP wrote one of the first open implementations of
public key crypto, had one of the best track records in the biz, or had a
history of standing up to government pressure.

Talk about valuing form over function.

We ended up not going with PGP's product because it didn't integrate with our
AD infrastructure very well and their odd licensing requirements, but the
Gartner's report never even mentioned those.

~~~
ig1
If you're a large enterprise company you don't want to be dependent on a non-
mature company which has a high risk of failure and had a history of patent
violations, government disputes and software security vulnerabilities. Simple
as that.

I'm not saying Gartner is good, but I certainly wouldn't want to risk my
company on PGP.

~~~
edw519
"but I certainly wouldn't want to risk my company on PGP"

All my privately owned clients do.

And none of them subscribe to Gartner or anyone else for "expert" opinions.

Unlike enterprises, they _have_ to get the best value to stay in business.

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sutro
I was highly receptive to this article given its title but it turned out to be
a toothless disappointment. Despite Cringely's self-congratulatory sense that
he is "attacking the temple of IT" and "alienating an entire industry,"
everything he says about Gartner et al could be applied to any type of
consultant, and nothing he says is particularly surprising or revelatory.

I was hoping for an article exposing the fact that Gartner et al are actually
pay-to-play extortion rackets run against enterprise software vendors. The
software vendors need their products to appear in Gartner's supposedly
objective reports, but, hey, surprise surprise, Gartner only covers those
vendors who pay them for <sarcasm>totally unrelated</sarcasm> research
services, and, hey, surprise surprise, the vendors that pay Gartner the most
money somehow end up with the most favorable <sarcasm>objective</sarcasm>
research coverage.

There is a symbiotic relationship between Gartner et al, enterprise software
vendors, and corporate IT departments. The IT department managers have no
incentive to find simple, cost-effective solutions to their problems because
that would mean cutting their own budgets and headcount. Rather, they need to
justify their bloated budgets and headcounts -- Gartner provides such
justification. On the other side, the enterprise software vendors need to
justify their overpriced, overly-complex software -- again, Gartner provides
the justification. All three sides of this unholy trinity know that this is a
racket and that providing real value and usability to the actual business
users is beside the point -- the real point is to provide money and jobs to
the IT departments, the software vendors, and, of course, to Gartner.

Will the real Robert X Cringely please stand up and point out how naked this
emperor really is?

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akd
I once had to use some Gartner numbers and they looked really sketchy; they
predicted that almost all desktop PCs would be the all-in-one iMac style in 3
years. I called up the main analyst (at a cost of $800) and asked him how he
got the data.

After much hemming and hawing it turned out that he had sent out a
questionnaire to 500 CIOs of medium-sized businesses, ~80 of whom responded,
about their preference for this form factor. Nevermind that the vast majority
of desktops are bought by large companies, or that the form factor has
drawbacks which were not explained.

Total Garbage.

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babul
The reports are only as good as the people who write them and the depth they
go in to. Often, I find the information is superficial, gathered from
technical documents and whitepapers, without actual/significant usage/testing
by them.

However, if you know nothing about the topic, atleast they do provide a
ballpark of what to look at, even if it is a broken window fallacy (you look
at what is there rather than considering what is not).

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gabriel
I used to make fun of Gartner (and the like). Then I went to an insurance
company and people just didn't get the jokes :)

Naturally, I still told people my true thoughts and if you know how to justify
your arguments _and_ have the technical capability to back them up with action
you will be absolutely indispensable. (That recent book list had a book
related to this subject, go find it!).

Great thing is when you leave (and you will leave) they feel a real loss (not
that you intend harm), and all you have is a gain. Welcome to The Industry.

Learn to hack your way through it, or become part of the problem :)

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freikwcs
They're great at looking smart, but anyone that has taken stats 101 can see
right through their surveys. Attended a conference once where people just
drilled the so-called expert of all the flaws in the data-collection
methodology. Felt kinda bad for the person.

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patrickg-zill
What do they really do? They pass off shoddy reporting and questionable data
gathering as facts to gullible people who work in large corporations.

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stcredzero
About frickin time!

