Pelz-Sharpe Alan Pelz-Sharpe

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Independence and Industry Analysts

1-Feb-2008

Tags: , Component Content Management, Document Management (ECM), Enterprise Search, Portals and Content Integration, Web Analytics, Web Content Management, Marketplace at Large, Selecting Technology

Wall Street Journal columnist Lee Gomes wrote an interesting piece about industry analyst firm The Aberdeen Group. Gomes first wrote about Aberdeen in 2002, and that article contributed to the firm's collapse and eventual acquisition by Harte-Hanks. At the time, Gomes took issue with what he considered to be "pay-for-praise" analysis.

In this latest piece he revisits the issue and looks at Aberdeen's new "sponsored research" model. The full article and subsequent discussion is well worth a read, particularly if you are a buyer or consumer of analyst research. The fact of the matter is that the majority of industry analyst firms from the largest to the smallest are heavily dependent on vendor support to operate. They may claim to be independent, but we beg to differ on their interpretation of the word independent.

Why am I pointing this out to you? Simple, at CMS Watch we don't do "sponsored research" of any description. We do not consult to vendors. We do not write papers for them. We do not speak at their events. We don't even accept hotel and flights from them -- most large vendors cover analysts' costs to bring them to their user conferences -- we pay our own way.

This may not always make us popular with the vendors we write about, since many are used to having financial leverage over the "independent" analysts who write about them (though over the years we have seen more vendors come to value our neutrality -- once they come to understand it). Incredibly, much if not most of the research that you as a buyer of technology will pay for has already been funded fully or in part by the vendors. When you see a section in any evaluation labeled "challenges" instead of "weaknesses," you know something more than semantics is going on.

We think there's a better way. We write for you the buyer and user of technology, and only you, because in our experience, that's the only way to get the real story.

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