At the end of a week when we’ve driven an interesting discussion about how vendors use, and pay for, canned industry analyst quotes, comes this rather sweet missive from CA, which turns the discussion on its head.
“CA is honored that Forrester ranks Unicenter Service Desk a leader,” said Jacob Lamm, senior vice president and general manager of CA’s Business Service Optimization business unit. “Service management is a core IT management capability and a strong growth business for CA, so our success with Unicenter Service Desk is perfectly aligned with our customers’ success in optimally delivering service to the enterprise.”
It seems like positive endorsements certainly work both ways.
Hat tip to mega value platinum reader and RedMonk peer/competitor for share of conversation MWD analyst Jon Collins. He asks:
why would Gartner want to change, when vendors still do this sort of thing?
Its a great question Jon, with reference to my posting about how the industry analyst is set for change and future transparency. But I never said Gartner wanted to change. The status quo is in the leviathan’s interest. The question is will customers force it to change? More pertinently can we force it to change?
The endorsement of Forrester above could actually been seen as a move to keep Gartner honest couldn’t it? Its in CA’s interest, after all, for Gartner to have quadrant competition. So why not say some nice things about the alternative….
Or maybe its just a case of playing the game…
Note to CA: It would be good to get update on Service Desk, for me and Cote. We’d be particularly interested in talking to some customers so we can put some meat on the bones of the analysis. “perfect alignment” – that’s service management talk, alright.
Jon Collins says:
February 24, 2006 at 1:47 pm
Thanks for correcting my spelling… do you think the “blog of the future” will allow me to edit my posts?
Michael Fasosin says:
February 24, 2006 at 10:55 pm
Hi James, you’re not alone. I’ve complained about this loads of times. I call it the “Magic Quadrant Syndrome” assumed thought leadership and innovation based on Powerpoint rigging. You or your readers might enjoy this. http://poseidongroove.wordpress.com/2006/02/24/top-down-vs-bottom-up-approaches-to-soa-no-there-is-a-third-way/ I think we might have a new line of business to stop the effect. RFI/RFP Vendor Qualification. Effectively, we can all put the likes of Gartner out of Business.
Thanks
Michael Fasosin
Daniel Golding says:
February 26, 2006 at 6:43 am
At some point, AR folks, vendors, enterprises, and (more importantly) the press will realize that there is a difference between RA firms that worship mammon and those that do not. The Burton’s and 451’s would, in a better world, have a competitive advantage over the Forresters and Gartners. Taking vendor money for “custom whitepapers”, consulting designed to move one “up and to the right” and so forth are simply inexcusable.
james governor says:
February 27, 2006 at 9:52 am
uh. thanks i guess daniel.
i like to think redmonk has just as much of an advantage as burton or 451 in that regard.
michael – i will have to check that out…
whaddya want jon? a read/write web?
James says:
February 27, 2006 at 11:41 am
What if Gartner were to instantaneously embrace open source analsyis? The “Leviathan” could then put everyone else out of business…
james governor says:
February 27, 2006 at 12:11 pm
i dont think it would James. no more than IBM supporting USS under zSeries put everyone else out of business, or IBM and HP supporting Linux put everyone out of business. we shouldnt confuse transparency with being out of business. that’s a dangerous equivalence. do me a favour and comment on the question of enterprises not being more open about their own infrastructures and so on. i realise you are a contrarian but its surely too early to begin Gartner’s defence…. 😉
Michael Fasosin says:
February 27, 2006 at 10:09 pm
Hi James,
I think we’re almost into level playing field territory with all the mash up web we have now.
Enterprise buyers will certainly not bury their heads in the sand for much longer if we they really focus on “Return on Assets”. The period of don’t rock the boat will soon be behind us.
Redmonk has as much chance as Gartner in this market. I really do want Gartner and their likes to be very objective and hard on Vendors. It’ll make Enterprise Buyers do proper due dilligence before selecting Powerpoint API Integrations
It’s called squeaky bum time!!