Depth and Candor

The Real Story Group is not your typical analyst firm.

Our research is the result of careful research by independent industry veterans with strong technical backgrounds, and is supported by interviews with actual customers.

Our research always begins with a business case analysis that you can use to evaluate your strategic options (and share with your boss). But we are not cheerleaders: these solutions can be complicated to implement, and we remain honest about the real costs and effort required to get them to work.

Our research delves into significant technical detail, not just about the overall fields we cover, but about the specific products we discuss. We get beyond vendor PowerPoint slides and routine Excel checklists to offer useful analysis for architects, developers, and other engineers.

At the same time, we simplify complex topics through custom illustrations and screenshots showing the products in action.

We cover more vendors than most analyst firms, including dozens of open source projects and key mid-market players. You have many good choices. We help you uncover them.

Our assessments are completely independent. We do not perform work for vendors and have no incentive to favor one over the other. When we see something negative about a product or a vendor, we say it. When a vendor does something well, we write about it, and expect nothing in return.

More importantly, we never rank "best" or "magic" vendors. Instead we detail the strengths and weaknesses of the various solutions, then identify their suitability for different types of use cases, while isolating vendor tendencies that may influence long-term product roadmaps.

Our research concludes with a list of pitfalls to avoid when implementing any of these solutions -- gathered from the hard experience of those who have gone before you. We also provide practical product selection roadmaps.

Candor means accessibility. We make ourselves available to our subscribers, to answer your questions, advise on your decisions, and educate your team.

Above all, whenever we look at products, assess the latest buzz phrases, or describe features, or offer advice, we try to put ourselves in your position: the technology buyer.