I was reading some comments on ARmadgeddon when I noticed Carter Lusher, HP industry analyst supremo, holding forth.
As Carter argues, he has a pretty unique insight into old question – do analysts influence enterprise decision making? – because has held the role of technology buyer, analyst, analyst of analysts, and now manager of analyst relations program at one of the industry’s biggest firms.
Carter’s comment says:
for confidentially reasons, I cannot share specifics, but the volume of the impact has shocked even me. Small deals, large deals, across HP business products — but not consumer or SMB – the analysts have their fingerprints all over billions of HP’s revenues.
I would like to see HP embrace the Long Tail of industry analyst firms but I have to respect the choices it makes about investment and segmentation. Talking of respect though, the only time in five years a vendor has called me third tier to my face (as a reason not to brief me on a one-to-one basis), it was an HP AR representative. But if Gartner is seen as the only truly important player in town, of course that’s where you’ll focus the budget and the attention.
Especially when
• On average, 30% of tech buyers have removed a vendor from a short list based on the commentary of an analyst
That’s influence, and you would not want to be the dropped vendor, now would you?
On a seperate note I had also not realised (thanks Carter) that Gartner had inveigled its way into the US public sector procurement organisation – the GAO. How on earth using the magic quadrant squares with US public sector commitments to purchase open standards is beyond me, but consistency is something you only really find in books. Hats off to Gartner though; public sector lobbying is one way to make big bucks.
Anyway – I need to go complete some sales proposals for 2006. Demand is high for RedMonk services, which has to be a good thing. We may be n-tier, but our community and our clients know the value of our insights. That is good enough for me.
Jonathan Schwartz says:
December 11, 2005 at 1:38 am
I recently read some commentary from a “tier 1” industry analyst suggesting that Sun would have a hard time competing against open source operating systems. A brand name tier 1 analyst didn’t know Solaris was open source. Brand name.
So the next time someone calls you third tier, take out a mirror, hold it in front of them, and ask them to repeat the statement, James. You’re tier 1 in our book (even when you disagree with us).
/pd says:
December 11, 2005 at 9:20 am
Eh ?? That’s a *compliment* James , by any standards. Not really sure if the above are sun’s coo comments or not, but what the heck… !!
ARonaut says:
December 12, 2005 at 11:57 am
Geee, the Borg is everywhere!
james governor says:
December 12, 2005 at 1:27 pm
it is a lovely compliment peter. and i am pretty sure that it is from Jonathan himself.
note the use of a story to make the point, which is a Jonathan Schwartz hallmark. i am on his blogroll. and i was lucky enough to get a chance to have breakfast with him last week so we have had some recent interaction.
Still very nice to know a COO can make time to support RedMonk in this way – maybe this comment gets my testimonial of the year award.
Susan says:
December 14, 2005 at 10:13 am
Thanks for that. It’s always interesting to read such things.