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Gartner, Who Needs It?

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by dotxen

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The company I work for has an expensive contract with Gartner (is there any other kind?!). Whenever there is a technology solution in the air, we have to consult Gartner and their Magic Quadrant, (which, incidentally, is nothing new and was not created by Gartner). My MD says "Gartner is God".

At Gartner teleconferences, or when a Gartner analyst hove?s into view, we listen and then take a view based on that advice. At least that is the expectation.

Recently we had a Gartner call that slammed a technology that I wanted to run with. The vendor/developer we were asking about was selling Virtuozzo, a virtualisation application. The Gartner analyst made various disparaging remarks about the efficacy of this application, which was contrary to my own opinion and investigations.

After listening to this guy my Project Manager said, "Well Robb, that's coal-boxed Virtuozzo, we go with Microsoft VS".

I contacted the Virtuozzo developer and reported the accusations. These were roundly condemned and Gartner was contacted and challenged on these points.

I am struggling to convince my company that this product is perfectly okay and that the Gartner analyst now accepts that he was misinformed/uninformed. However, the damage is done and we are moving forward with MSVS and not a far superior product.

Company's spend ?millions to get Gartner advice and opinion. My thesis is that Gartner analysts, like any other human beings, have agendas, can be misinformed/uninformed, and can be just plain wrong, yet we continue to look to them for advice and support in our decision-making, and pay them big bucks for the pleasure.

Stop this foolishness I say, I remember that Gartner is a Jackdaw, and like all Jackdaws, they just save up the garbage and then spread it around.

Tell me I'm wrong.

4 replies

by jamesrl

I was responsible for a very expensive contract with Gartner - I was responsible for managing to get the cost down and making sure we made the best use of the services.

Of course they are human and have biases. They seem to milk several articles and papers out of each theory they come up with.

Like anything else, their opinion is something to be considered, but not subsituted for your own analysis - they are good at the big picture, but not so great on the details.

My recommendation was to dump them and go with one of the competitors at about half the price. But I was overruled.

James

by bfilmfan

I recall some bozo there named Lisa that told a client that Active Directory was a technology that would never take off.

The client decided to implement Novell.

Said client later spent several million dollars implementing AD.

I wonder if Lisa still works for Gartner.

by tony hopkinson

Whatever conclusion they come to, do the opposite.

I never worked for any company dumb enough to employ them, and never seen an article from them that was worth printing. They exist to direct non technical managers down technology paths that suit THEIR business needs.

by raelayne

First, though, I have to say that anyone who would simply ask one consultant for an opinion and take it as gospel is missing a few pennies in his roll.

Gartner, Butler Group, Meta Group, Forrester -- all useful, all helpful; just take their research and think about how it applies to your situation. I much prefer a balanced and broad research effort to a single tech's opinion (sorry, but we all have biases). Besides, there are more important things for a tech to be doing than covering ground Gartner analysts have already covered.

Finally, why pay? You can find almost all magic quadrants (for example) on the web somewhere -- vendors generally post articles favorable to their products, and you can find them. I know it's evil, but I hardly ever pay for the reports. I do occasionally, but then I pay by report -- never a contract.

IMHO

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