“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…”