So a Sun blogger asks: Where Are The Analyst Bloggers?<\/A> <\/P> Great question Deepak: you might enjoy our recent commentary on Sun: here<\/A> and here<\/A><\/P> Legacy analyst firms don’t do much blogging; although some of their employees do.<\/P> Newer firms have a better grasp of the economics of the Cluetrain<\/A>, where information wants to be free and markets are conversations. We also in most cases don’t have the ludicrous overheads or debts to shareholders.<\/P> My favorite analyst blogger? None other than my partner in crime, Stephen O’Grady<\/A>. <\/P> You have to check out Jon Udell<\/A>, who walks and squalks like an industry analyst, but unlike most of our breed, actually builds stuff. He is probably the smartest guy out there right now, but may morph into a media mogul<\/A>. <\/P> There is plenty of solid insight out there:<\/P> mwd<\/A> – The two Neils on Business IT alignment<\/P> Dan Sholler<\/A><\/P> Nick Gall<\/A><\/P> Illuminata<\/A><\/P> Richard<\/A> Veryard<\/A><\/P> erp4IT<\/A> (a user doing the kind of work in service management that an industry analyst should step up to).<\/P> Gartner blogs though are my absolute favourites. No updates since June last year. Does that mean the industry has no future? 0.8 Probability.<\/P> I love the way Gartner is offering insights into EU expansion as its latest post<\/A>, a year after the event, and a couple week’s after the Dutch and French publics offered their own insights on the subject.<\/P> At RedMonk we have been writing about disruptions<\/A> in analyst business<\/A> models<\/A> for a while now. You could argue we have been actively driving this disruption. Who would have thought EMC Documentum would publish a white paper under a CreativeCommons license<\/A>?<\/P> Also on a deeply entwined issue – ethics. One issue with HP’s David Gee<\/A> – why not put some pointers or trackbacks to other conversations on the subject of analyst ethics? There is prior art… In general its easier to push the snowball downhill when you link to other people, businessweek blog’s booster<\/A> notwithstanding. You ask for a True and Fair View<\/A>. Excellent. We’re happy to engage in a dialogue whenever you are.<\/P> One point I like about businessweek in its post is that it also asks the corrolary about the conduct of vendors, with respect to the pressure they exert on analysts; to kill unfavorable<\/A> coverage, for example. <\/P> I have a feeling vendor pressure is one topic we won’t be seeing in headlines. How do unscrupulous analyst firms stay in business? By working with unscrupulous vendors, of course. There is money in shill work, reputational damage notwithstanding. <\/P> Here are some blogs asking some good questions.<\/P>