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Don't look at them as providing advice. Look at them as providing these two things: * They provide assurance against bad decisions. Every exec wants to have

Don't look at them as providing advice. Look at them as providing these two things: * They provide assurance against bad decisions. Every exec wants to have someone to point at when a few millions were wasted. Don't get me wrong here. The job of a higher-up exec probably implies wasting a few millions every now and then by taking the best course in adverse circumstances. * They provide a neutral judge for execs surrounded by warring factions - and they don't even have to be internal. At our company I see how A is a sane option, but B is used by a competitor. Even if said competitor bleeds money as a result, we regularly hire the same contractors, and they love reusing their investment and see you bleed money (to them) by giving you also B. What do you do while they whisper in the ear of your boss? When companies get big enough to become vulnerable to sociological dysfunctionality, Gartner can help a lot. Or make things much worse.

techpop10 8y ago
Gartner is a very expensive and unreliable CYA resource. This may sound brutal, but take a look at their authors. Most have never actually worked with the technology they are writing about and almost never have hands-on experience. They are pundits, on the sidelines, talking to a very small subset of users and making very broad conclusions. Often times the executives (and their subordinates) that rely on their reports are more knowledgable about the technology. Some even speculate that the more vendors pay for their consulting services, the better they write about you. I'm not convinced it's pure payola as much as it just bad analysis.