4 ms·

Gartner has checklists?

by antman 5y ago

hughrr 5y ago
Yes each one has an elaborate story and a pile of cash behind it.
- vishnugupta 5y ago
  My recent realisation has been these shops fall in a category of what I call "rating agency" all of which share common characteristics. For example; Moody's, Gartner, Michelin Stars. 1. Stripped of all the paraphernalia these are yellow pages ranked by popularity in their domains. 2. They are in the business of selling customers to the said businesses. So their primary customers are businesses; restaurants, mutual funds etc., 3. They need to maintain authenticity of impartiality so it's not easy to find out how they make money. 4. Their secondary audience is decision makers; CIOs, money managers etc., Think of -- "no one got fired for picking at the 1st ranked software from Gartner's list", "But Moody's rated it AAA, how was I supposed to know that fund would tank". It's a terrific CYA tool. 5. I'd say about 80% of the times they do a decent job of stack ranking. But there is an element of virtuous cycle there. The top rated "things" are popular because they are ranked to be so by these rating companies. Once a critical mass adopts then that tech/restaurant/etc indeed becomes numerically popular.
  - fphhotchips 5y ago
    I think it's worth adding: the domains that these organisations rank are chosen by those organisations. How the ranking works is chosen by the ranking org. A major source of revenue for the ranking orgs is conference sponsorships, and one of the things included in those sponsorships is access to the analysts writing the reports. It's also worth noting that ranking companies don't rank products, they rank vendors. So a company that does everything kind of ok over multiple products can get an advantage over a company that solves one problem very well with one product, if the ranking companies choose to define the category in an overly broad way.
  - thrower123 5y ago
    With Gartner, you literally just pay them and they put you on their Magic Quadrant
    - TecoAndJix 5y ago
      Have a source on this? I researched this and found that the only benefit of paying them as a client is access to the analysts that make the determination.
- rapnie 5y ago
  I've been in a company where the slick presentations of marketing & sales were instrumental in placing our product in the 'Leader' quadrant with features we didn't even offer, but were subsequently asked to 'just build'. It was terrible.
  - hughrr 5y ago
    Oh yes we had one of them. It was a leading vendor in security analysis. We pointed their product at itself and it kicked out a ton of CVEs and lead to a very embarrassing Zoom call for them :)
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  Yeah I worked with some solutions that Gartner considers 'Magic'. And one that wasn't. The one that wasn't is so much better and the magic one is still playing catch up. Most people that actually work in the field also consider the non-magical solution the best by far. I really think this is just a 'who paid us the most' contest. Ps I'm also an Enterprise IT architect and also leaving it. Not sure if my reasons are the same as I didn't get a chance to read the article yet :) But in my case the reason was that we're becoming too much of a Microsoft shop. It went from 'Find the best solution and implement it' to 'Implement what Microsoft tells us to'. Usually those solutions are not the best and I end up having to find workarounds for workarounds. Sure all the integration is great but it's more of a walled garden thing than a real benefit. Basically ruined the job for me.
  - hughrr 5y ago
    Good luck with that one. When you’re a unix guy with a Dell slapped in front of you running windows that you can’t do anything useful in then you know you’ve reached peak enterprise IT!

Gartner has checklists?

by antman 5y ago

Gartner has checklists?

hughrr 5y ago

Yes each one has an elaborate story and a pile of cash behind it.

vishnugupta 5y ago
My recent realisation has been these shops fall in a category of what I call "rating agency" all of which share common characteristics. For example; Moody's, Gartner, Michelin Stars. 1. Stripped of all the paraphernalia these are yellow pages ranked by popularity in their domains. 2. They are in the business of selling customers to the said businesses. So their primary customers are businesses; restaurants, mutual funds etc., 3. They need to maintain authenticity of impartiality so it's not easy to find out how they make money. 4. Their secondary audience is decision makers; CIOs, money managers etc., Think of -- "no one got fired for picking at the 1st ranked software from Gartner's list", "But Moody's rated it AAA, how was I supposed to know that fund would tank". It's a terrific CYA tool. 5. I'd say about 80% of the times they do a decent job of stack ranking. But there is an element of virtuous cycle there. The top rated "things" are popular because they are ranked to be so by these rating companies. Once a critical mass adopts then that tech/restaurant/etc indeed becomes numerically popular.
- fphhotchips 5y ago
  I think it's worth adding: the domains that these organisations rank are chosen by those organisations. How the ranking works is chosen by the ranking org. A major source of revenue for the ranking orgs is conference sponsorships, and one of the things included in those sponsorships is access to the analysts writing the reports. It's also worth noting that ranking companies don't rank products, they rank vendors. So a company that does everything kind of ok over multiple products can get an advantage over a company that solves one problem very well with one product, if the ranking companies choose to define the category in an overly broad way.
- thrower123 5y ago
  With Gartner, you literally just pay them and they put you on their Magic Quadrant
  - TecoAndJix 5y ago
    Have a source on this? I researched this and found that the only benefit of paying them as a client is access to the analysts that make the determination.
rapnie 5y ago
I've been in a company where the slick presentations of marketing & sales were instrumental in placing our product in the 'Leader' quadrant with features we didn't even offer, but were subsequently asked to 'just build'. It was terrible.
- hughrr 5y ago
  Oh yes we had one of them. It was a leading vendor in security analysis. We pointed their product at itself and it kicked out a ton of CVEs and lead to a very embarrassing Zoom call for them :)
GekkePrutser 5y ago
Yeah I worked with some solutions that Gartner considers 'Magic'. And one that wasn't. The one that wasn't is so much better and the magic one is still playing catch up. Most people that actually work in the field also consider the non-magical solution the best by far. I really think this is just a 'who paid us the most' contest. Ps I'm also an Enterprise IT architect and also leaving it. Not sure if my reasons are the same as I didn't get a chance to read the article yet :) But in my case the reason was that we're becoming too much of a Microsoft shop. It went from 'Find the best solution and implement it' to 'Implement what Microsoft tells us to'. Usually those solutions are not the best and I end up having to find workarounds for workarounds. Sure all the integration is great but it's more of a walled garden thing than a real benefit. Basically ruined the job for me.
- hughrr 5y ago
  Good luck with that one. When you’re a unix guy with a Dell slapped in front of you running windows that you can’t do anything useful in then you know you’ve reached peak enterprise IT!