Over the past few months, the IIAR have been running a survey to identify who AR practitioners believe should win the award of ‘analyst of the year’. With over 116 respondents from around the world, the number of firms and individuals that people wanted to recognise was extraordinary (191 different analyst names and 103 separate houses).
I always thought analysts firms had a tough time of it. On one side they are obligated to sell research and reports while their analysts are (ideally) required to be impartial and credible and covering an industry as a whole. That’s why I was happy to see some of the analysts pioneering a different model grab numerous honors. Redmonk, a small analyst firm makes all their research public but charges for consulting, received a number of honors including fourth place for Analyst Firm of the Year behind mega analyst firms Forrester, Gartner, and IDC.
It was nice to see James get recognized as number 3 among all analysts but I was most happy to see Cote who covers my industry closely be recognized. This is especially impressive since he’s got a relatively short tenure as an analyst but finished very high in the ratings. I suppose you could describe him as a Cinderella story.
This unknown comes out of nowhere to lead the pack…the crowd is on its feet…got tears in his eyes…Former Java Developer….
I am a fan of the open source analysts RedMonk and 451 Group. I think Alex Fletcher from Entiva has good open source insights and Jeremy Owyang from Forrester share great information on his blog about social media. However, when it comes to IT buying decisions I have never been much of a fan of the big analyst firms.
I remember having breakfast with Sendmail’s Eric Allman after he was the CTO at Sendmail Inc. He told me that when he had problems to solve everyday it was easier to figure out what direction to take his project/software in. When he became a CTO he didn’t solve his own problems and that made it difficult to set product directions. I suspect the same goes for analysts who rely on interviews, briefings, and surveys for a large part of their information. They are largely getting their information second hand and even then what they are receiving is probably to some degree suspect.
Coté and John M. Willis did an impromptu podcast with me at BarCamp Austin in the courtyard over beers for their podcast the IT Management guys. What fascinates me is that John has become Mr. Web 2.0 whipping out his little mobile podcasting studio. Six months ago when I met John he was just learning to blog now he’s a Twitter, blogging, podcasting fool (But in a good way). It was a lot of fun and I thank them for having me but I think it illustrates things that I have a face for radio, a voice made for a keyboard (Maybe with some voice lessons I will get that Barry White radio voice and rival Coté who I swear could be a voice over guy if the analyst thing every tanks
Most of my blogging today will be at the Open Management Consortium website. If you are interested in open source systems management you might want to follow our Twitter feed at:
Hello,
my name is Mark Hinkle
and I am technology enthusiast and executive for Zenoss Inc. the maker
of the open source
monitoring software, Zenoss Core. This is my personal blog
and does not reflect the opinions of my employer. I am also on the
advisory boards for open
source collaboration software maker, MindTouch and
SourceForge, the world's largest repository of open source software.
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