Thursday, May 25th, 2006
“Open” analysts with new biz model grab InformationWeek’s attention
Just sat down to page through InformationWeek… and on page 47 (or click here for online story) noticed quite a write up about the “new” breed of analysts out there – most of which are sharing analysis and insights in the “open” in a somewhat community discussion style. This should be a pretty interesting study on industries that undergo change – the old either goes out or adapts with the new over time. Usually the old doesn’t change until the new take enough market share to force change… should be interesting to watch how this transition unfolds. You can check out Stephen O’Grady’s blog here.
One thing I didn’t see mentioned was that the blog/podcast medium really brings out the personality/flavor versus some of the stuffy, over pompous [insert big firm name here] reports you just can’t wait to throw in your trash bin…
The model of analyst firms always intrigued me – especially when most companies have experts in house that know more than analysts do… some of the top technologists I’ve ever met are at Wall Street firms… and analysts rely on those technologists to do their “analysis” … and yet the Wall St. Firm’s CIO pays the big analyst firms big money… to repeat what their technologists said… make sense?
For instance, what does Laura DiDio at Yankee Group know? She was an “investigative news” reporter before joining Yankee Group… as an IT Analyst. No, I’m not kidding. Admittedly, those Wall St. firms probably wouldn’t let her in the door, yet she gets quite a bit of publicity through Microsoft saying Linux “isn’t there yet” for SMBs… yet we all know a number of SMB shops who are loving Linux.
“DiDio began her reporting career in the mainstream and business press. As an investigative reporter, she worked for various broadcasting and print outlets, including CNN, Channel 5 News in New York and Channel 11 in Minneapolis.”
I welcome the “new” group of analysts. An open, frank discussion in public tends to weed out bias and develop a community consensus with all sides of an argument out on the table – similar to that thing called open source. What I really like to see is the analysts who eat the food they promote – it’s one thing to talk about what you’re seeing customers use Linux for – it’s another to use it yourself and talk with customers. Who was the last [big firm] analyst quoted about Linux that uses it themselves?
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January 13th, 2007 at 5:15 pm
tecosystems » The RedMonk IT Report: On Zimbra, Ubuntu, Wordpress and More said:
[...] Because I have de facto responsibility for all of RedMonk’s IT infrastructure, my first and overriding concern is for the needs of our business. While I cannot therefore treat our infrastructure as a testing environment, it would be inaccurate to state that our experiences with some of the decisions below should not be expected to impact our analysis. We try, as Michael kindly notes, to actually use some of the technologies we cover. Strange concept, I know. [...]