I was highly receptive to this article given its title but it turned out to be a toothless disappointment. Despite Cringely's self-congratulatory sense that he

I was highly receptive to this article given its title but it turned out to be a toothless disappointment. Despite Cringely's self-congratulatory sense that he is "attacking the temple of IT" and "alienating an entire industry," everything he says about Gartner et al could be applied to any type of consultant, and nothing he says is particularly surprising or revelatory. I was hoping for an article exposing the fact that Gartner et al are actually pay-to-play extortion rackets run against enterprise software vendors. The software vendors need their products to appear in Gartner's supposedly objective reports, but, hey, surprise surprise, Gartner only covers those vendors who pay them for <sarcasm>totally unrelated</sarcasm> research services, and, hey, surprise surprise, the vendors that pay Gartner the most money somehow end up with the most favorable <sarcasm>objective</sarcasm> research coverage. There is a symbiotic relationship between Gartner et al, enterprise software vendors, and corporate IT departments. The IT department managers have no incentive to find simple, cost-effective solutions to their problems because that would mean cutting their own budgets and headcount. Rather, they need to justify their bloated budgets and headcounts -- Gartner provides such justification. On the other side, the enterprise software vendors need to justify their overpriced, overly-complex software -- again, Gartner provides the justification. All three sides of this unholy trinity know that this is a racket and that providing real value and usability to the actual business users is beside the point -- the real point is to provide money and jobs to the IT departments, the software vendors, and, of course, to Gartner. Will the real Robert X Cringely please stand up and point out how naked this emperor really is?