Comments on: Gartner Sued Over Magic Quadrant for Alleged Damages of $132M plus Punitives of $1.3B

By: Highlights from the 2011 Wisdom of Crowds Business Intelligence Market Study | Kellblog

Fri, 27 May 2011 18:39:46 +0000

[...] cast of industry analysts who were both great analysts and great people. It was a rare (think: ZL Technologies) case of the farmer and cowman becoming [...]

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 08:47:57 +0000

It is rather interesting for me to read the post. Thanks for it. I like such topics and anything connected to this matter. BTW, why don't you change design :).

By: Michael E. Dortch

Michael E. Dortch — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 21:16:04 +0000

I've been an analyst for Yankee Group, Robert Frances Group and Aberdeen Group and an independent during the past 30 years. I've learned that it's important to differentiate users seeking guidance via purchased research and vendors seeking to curry favor with the analysts behind that research. If users get value out of what they buy and read, more power to them. But what they buy and read is directly affected by relationships between those analysts and the vendors they cover. If those analysts are forced by their employers' business models to bias those vendor relationships in any direction, any claim to impartiality or even-handedness is and should be highly suspect. (Besides, as I've said for years, I'm not sure anyone should base their business or IT strategy on anything with the word "magic" in its title.)Meanwhile, consolidation in the analyst firm business continues, most recently with Gartner planning to buy AMR. (See my blog on this at http://bit.ly/GartnerGrabsAMR/.) At the same time, my employer, Focus (www.focus.com), innovative firms like RedMonk (www.redmonk.com) and others are trying to render traditional analyst firms irrelevant, by connecting those with expertise more directly to those who need or want it. Maybe we can eventually render the debate about "pay for play" analyst firms irrelevant — which would suit me and a growing number of analysts, users and vendors I know just fine.

By: Paula Thornton

Paula Thornton — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 21:57:52 +0000

People buy the research based on trust — they rely on the resources Gartner has gathered to do for them what they cannot do for themselves. But if that trust is not questionable, if Gartner is unwilling to let the results be subjected to scrutiny by others (as in 'open debate' and conversation around their findings, then I would suggest that their research has not been 'tested'.The biggest issue is that they reduce detail into a mathematical abstraction that is immediately taken out of context. Even in the same category, they compare apples against oranges — and apparently no one is the wiser of any of it (well at least not that you'd know because there is no open discussion).

By: Daniel Tunkelang

Daniel Tunkelang — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 18:06:26 +0000

Anonymous is right that no one is being forced to buy research from Gartner or any other analyst. And, regardless of the quality of analysis, suing an analyst for anything shy of defamation is just dumb--which makes it no wonder that the suit was dismissed.That said, I'm surprised that the market rewards analyst firms that take money from both IT vendors and IT buyers. While I never felt my previous employer's relationship with Gartner was pay-to-play, there's no question that we had to pay for the opportunity to brief analysts--in effect, payment was necessary (though not sufficient) to get attention. Meanwhile, I'd regularly hear rumors (and see circumstantial evidence) that competitors who invested more marketing budget into analyst relations saw return on that investment.To me, it's pretty simple: analysts (and advisors in general) should decide which side they're on and only take money from that side. I'm a big fan of CMS Watch on this front--they don't take money from vendors.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 12:45:56 +0000

In all fairness to Gartner (and I don't work for them)- if you are unhappy with the research, then don't buy it. If you don't feel it is valuable, then don't use it or don't listen the to the results. They are in business to make money and benefit their shareholders. I have been hearing this same argument for 10 years now- nothing has changed because there are still buyers for this research and Gartner has continued to pull away from their competition (I think they are about 3X bigger than anyone else). Obviously they are driving value somehow- otherwise why is everyone buying their research?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 15:35:00 +0000

I have to agree w/ bizQuirk and Vern – I too have been an analyst – not for a large firm but for a smaller tier 2 firm but they are all the same, the mafia – you pay me what I want, and I'll make sure you get what you want – wink wink. I was working for a large, public company that paid Gartner for it's services. We had asked Gartner to come in to listen to one of our strategies. Carolyn was actually one of the analysts in the room. She started off by saying you need to buy this report and that report from us and said that "we" (Gartner) needs more access to your executives (implying that until all of this happens – your not really going to get much 'value' from us). In the room we all understood that to mean 'pay to play'. However, with Web 2.0 functionality becoming more predominate and with articles like this, consumers can now go to sites and 'rate' or 'vote' on their products and let the ratings, provided by end users provide the information that consumers need. In time there will be no need for Gartner.

By: Dave Kellogg

Dave Kellogg — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:24:56 +0000

Alvin,I'm not sure if you're saying I'm defending the publicly to win favor or not, but just in case you missed it in the post — XML server (what my company makes) — is not a Gartner-recognized category at this time. Ergo, we don't even had a quad to be on! (Think: I cried because I had no shoes and then a person who had no feet.)Part of being innovative means you break/redefine historical category boundaries and Gartner — and all other large/segmented analyst firms — don't actually handle this so well.At Mark Logic, at Gartner we deal with 4 people: the XML person, the database person, the search person, and sometimes the ECM person. We should probably also meet with application development / appserver people but don't.So, for now, on this one, I'm happily rather neutral as I'm currently quad-less.And, what's more, I'm not sure I'd take what I wrote to be a defense; to me it was more just a perspective.Best,Dave

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 11:36:26 +0000

CLEAR AND SIMPLE:GARTNER IS PAY TO PLAY.ALWAYS HAS BEEN, ALWAYS WILL BE…I HOPE THE LAWSUIT CONTINUES AND THEY ARE SHOWN TO BE THE HOOKERS THAT THEY REALLY ARE.

By: Alvin T

Alvin T — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 23:50:56 +0000

Dave, very interesting writeup on the ZL-Gartner lawsuit. I guess in addition to giving Gartner money, another way to positively influence Gartner is to defend them publicly. :-)Leaving the ZL-Gartner lawsuit to the courts, the more important issue in front of the IT industry is transparency in the Gartner MQ. For example:- statement of how much each vendor is paying Gartner- statement that no analyst involved in the report or their management chain owns stock in any of the evaluated companies- evaluation criteria plus the items that did not make it into evaluation criteria and why- details on how each of the vendors scored on each of the criteria- how these scores translate into positions on the quadrant- etcOr asked another way: why would anyone not want transparency in the Gartner MQ – which as we all know affects the futures of companies and stock prices?Answer: The only people that do not want transparency are those that have something to hide…