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Debunking the AnalystsI 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. Aaron Fulkerson from MindTouch has a thoughtful blog post speaking to the recent Gartner report, The State of Open Source, 2008. Aaron makes a lot of the good points but here's the one that I think is interesting. I suspect many if not most CIOs that respond to Gartner surveys are ignorant of how much open source is in use in their enterprise. Aaron shares this anecdote:
Check out Aaron's point of view he's put an interesting spin on Gartners findings. For more Mark Hinkle, visit his Socialized Software blog.  Comment and Contribute
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