LAST month we wrote about Gartner getting sued [1, 2]. It was well deserved. Regardless of the plaintiff's individual case, there is generally a real illness at Gartner, whose interests and advice got polluted by money from the very same companies whose products they are supposed to impartially assess. You can never let a fox guard the hen house.
“First of all, Gartner must always offer disclosure.”What would it take for Gartner to be taken seriously by the very same people whom it's attacking?
First of all, Gartner must always offer disclosure. Not only should studies be labeled clearly with their sponsor/s; Gartner offers other services too, and these which 'inform' tend to completely conceal the names of companies that pay Gartner in other ways, including investments (Larry Ellison and Bill Gates, for instance, invest heavily in Gartner).
To give a contrary example, Red Monk should be praised for its disclosure policies. It is easy to tell what conflicting interests may exist. Red Monk does not hide these.
Gartner knows that Free software people lack confidence in its output. Now it is stating the obvious by saying that Microsoft and SAP are not taking advantage of Free software, which is an understatement. SAP and Microsoft actually attack Free software. We will write about this later, in a separate post containing new examples about this pair.
Microsoft and SAP are falling behind when it comes to taking advantage of open source technology, despite cut-throat competition in the enterprise software market, a new analysis by Gartner has found.
This resulted in some suggesting that Gartner's research was simply a reflection of which companies paid it the most money (and recently netted the analyst firm a lawsuit).
I made similar accusations myself.
Gartner responded to such attacks, defending the integrity of its research. Yet its blind spot to open source seemed to persist.
--Microsoft, internal document [PDF]