Independant research information

Dear colleagues - I need some advise or some guidelines from you with regards to the use of independant research resources.

What are the generally accepted authorative information sources used by yourself that provides a good solid objective springboard in your daily decision making??

Where does Gartner rank - I do believe Gartner is a content provider to this forum, what about the other ones IDC, AMR, Forrester, Meta, etc?

I'm working for quite a large - at least in our terms - electronics, telecoms, IT, Multimedia, power electronics/electrics, etc. group of companies that is constantly expanding and my Group companies look at me for objective advice in a number of specialised IT areas - and frankly I need a good reliable objective resource!

Any advice appreciated..

Kind regards

Pieter