On IBM AR, “I dream of a world of standard reporting”, and death of the analyst business

Today I fired up bloglines and discovered that John Simonds is interviewing his colleagues in IBM Analyst Relations in a conversational Q&A style. Yesterday Stefanie Sirc was up; her humour and thoughts on analyst chest hair make this a non-standard communique from the world of IBM AR. Good stuff.

I wonder if John and Stefanie realised the implications of this paragraph though.

I dream of a world of standard reporting, where data is pulled effortlessly in real time from a variety of sources and compiled and formatted according to requestor’s preference. A place where relationships and results, correlations and predictive analysis allow for strategic analysis and proactive planning based on predetermined goals. Everyone would have access to this data paradise would be able to use it to better do their jobs, with a minium of new effort, since the data already exists, we just need to free it.

Amen. But you know what Stefanie, you just killed the industry analyst business. If your dream came true, you wouldn’t need us (well you certainly wouldn’t need IDC, anyway…)

And you know what – the IT industry would be a better place if we started sharing data about customer implementations and best practices. Call it open source analysis. Call it the death of the analyst business.

Call it a wonderful opportunity for RedMonk. Bring on the new transparency.

Stefanie says:

Transparency in this industry is important. Analysts play a very complex role, serving several constituencies. The public should be aware of the nature of the relationships between analysts, end users and vendors and the different types of research available and the very different ways it is produced.

And bring on more great posts from John Simonds. Just before I move on, I recommend you read this blog entry: John’s dad was instrumental in keeping the Germans at bay in world war 2. Thanks John’s dad. London is certainly a better place for being able to shoot down V2 rockets. We still have a few old buildings… 

Oh yeah – Stefanie and Cameron… .start blogging!