Per my post [0] last week, InformationWeek (IW) published their "Credibility of Analysts [1]" article today. For the most part, it rehashes the ancient questions of whether analysts can really be objective if they sell services to vendors. They use obvious examples and basically don't push the discussion forward at all. To be more specific, IW calls out the analysts for the following "transgressions:"

"it's not uncommon for IT research firms to write reports that are funded directly by tech vendors. Money changes hands, and the vendor that commissions a report often reviews it before general distribution."

"Analysts also show up in the marketing programs of the companies they cover."

"And there are hard-to-prove grumblings among small vendors that they have a better chance of being covered by a research firm if they are paying clients."

All are huge revelations, no? They give about two paragraphs (out of a 6 page article) about the value that end users receive and that most understand where the potential biases are and treat them accordingly.

The IW reporter than uses a few examples and pithy quotes from vendors like Stampede Technologies (who?) and Proofpoint. They make the point that the analysts matter "more than you want them to." Then are the age old fact that Gartner is partly owned by a private equity fund where high profile tech executives are limited partners. Do they really think that Larry Ellison influences Gartner because he's a limited partner of Silver Lake? They also kindly point out that Gartner invested in a VC partnership started by their former CEO. Well, every research firm did this back in the day, and all of them have unwound those positions, where possible. This is old news.

One anonymous technology VP who points out that analysts typically don't actually test the products they talk about.  Guess nobody has educated this person on how analysts do research, and how that differs from VARs and consultants. The VARs and consultants do play with the products, but they also get directly paid by the vendors when they sell something. Now that is bias! But I guess the VARs don't portray themselves as unbiased.

Amazingly enough, neither Microsoft, IBM nor Oracle would divulge how much they spend with analyst firms. Guess you can't fault the guy for asking, eh? Then IW gets the CEO's of the major analyst firms to go on record that "bias is not an issue." Duh. What are they going to say? Sure, we are biased as hell. Now pay me some more money. Give me a break.

One security vendor (who I've never heard of BTW) even says that being listed in a good spot on a magic quadrant will help his company get acquired. That's pretty naive, if you ask me. Every big security vendor has a significant M&A team and a bunch of investment bankers constantly trolling for deals. They know about every company in a space long before a MQ hits the street. I don't think acquirers put much stock in an MQ during due diligence. I really don't.

Then they close with a data point regarding a vendor that sponsored a white paper, and didn't make changes but could have. I agree that the practice of giving a vendor editorial control is ridiculous. But, it wasn't clear whether the writer ever read that specific white paper. Was it overtly biased? Did it cross the line? Did this writer listen to any analyst web casts? Or is the "opportunity for bias" the same as showing bias?  I guess in the press you can be guilty until proven innocent. Ah, the beauty of the 1st Amendment.

But, most of this article is just irrelevant. Let's respond to IW's "trangressions:"

• Educated end users need to know the context of a report (is it sponsored or not?) and treat the information accordingly. Because a report is sponsored doesn't mean it's wrong or biased. The end user needs to make his/her own judgment.
  
  
• Having an analyst participate in vendor web casts, etc. is doing a service to the user community. Any analyst says a vendor's stuff is great on a own web cast is an idiot. And out of courtesy, you don't say a competitor's stuff is great. You avoid discussion of vendors. It's not that hard. Anyway, most end users do not want to pay my daily rate to get me to wax poetically about a certain topic. If a group of 100-400 users can get access to the research in a web cast format, what's the issue with that?
  
  
• There was no substantiation of the "small vendors only get covered if they are clients" claim. Historically, every vendor that sucks uses that as an excuse for why they don't get good analyst coverage. I assure you, it most likely has to do with the fact that the vendor sucks.
  

IW had a great opportunity to educate their readers on how and when analysts can add value. Instead, they focused on old rumors and innuendo of bias. IW, if you are going to go on a witch hunt, you better find some witches. They are out there, and exposing clear instances of bias would have been interesting. They should have used the space to show clear examples of bias. That would have been interesting.