If you Strike us down we will only become stronger. #GartnerSucks

I have felt this way for awhile, Gartner sucks!  While I worked for the State of Ohio I saw several instances of what appeared to be more than independent reviews of a product/technology.  And pretty much ever since then I have viewed Gartner and other analysts with a HUGE grain of salt and I mean the like that would kill T-REX if it fell on him.

But last night my general annoyance with Gartner jumped to a level of flat at hatred and disdain for them as an organization.  They have moved from a model of bottom feeding and instigation to a model of attacking criticism and silencing key players in the next gen Networking field over minor criticism.

Steve Chambers at http://viewyonder.com posted the following on his site:

I read a brilliant blog post by J Michael Metz today about the recent Gartner report on FCoE by Joe Skorupa.  Of the many great lines and counter arguments in the post, likening Gartner to Chicken Little was comically accurate in my humble opinion, and is a typical analyst response to anything new and innovative: remember the scare stories about virtualization?  If you listened to guys like Joe, would you ever get anything done?

Please go and read the post yourself, but here’s the general outline to give you a flavour:

  • Define your terms – looks like Joe don’t know the difference between DCB and FCoE
  • Learning how to count – convergence increases components!  Does Joe think that virtualization increases physical server counts too?
  • Financial barriers – well, this is crap in crap out.  If you have more stuff (you don’t) then it’s more expensive (it isn’t)
  • Increased complexity – because it’s new?  because the teams, tools aren’t set up for it?
  • Hard to debug – crap in/out again, especially if you don’t understand DCB and FCoE.
  • Sublime to surreal – don’t do it because you might not get the benefit, but don’t rule them out.  What the hell does that mean?
  • Missed opportunities – when you don’t have an axe to grind, nor a hidden agenda, what’s the real opportunity?
  • Myopic strawmen – what about ETS?

Don’t forget that the ten-page Gartner report can be yours for $200.  Yes, that’s $20 a page.  The good times must be back!

If Joe can sell just nine of those reports he might want to invest in this FCoE course.

With that little post Steve started a process that led Gartner to “Asking” his employer to have him take down the post.  I was alerted to this situation on twitter where I am following Steve (@stevie_chambers).  What is cool about this is that it appears his employer did not fly off the handle but as he stated “my employer is awesome, they are v cool:”.  Assuming this is not sarcasm then good for his company.  But the bigger issue is why on earth should any employer have the right to censor an employees private blog?  Even more important is why should an analyst be treated as anything other than a criminal when they threaten the livelihood of an industry expert?  I’m not going to go deep into this lots of other smart people who have already done a good job at it.

The core of what I want to say though is you screwed up Gartner.  I am re-posting his article, so are hundreds of others.  Google Cache will make sure it lives on  (good luck strong arming them) and you have just pissed of the power players in the prime markets you support.  Seems like it might be time to hire people who understand the market and society you live in or find a line of work that fits dying empires like newspapers.  But the biggest mistake made here is that you have hired people who don’t know what they are talking about.  Steve points that out and the post clearly shows that your analyst was not in the know on a topic he chose to address.  Your first action should have been to fire Joe Skorupa then send Steve and his employer a nice thank you for pointing out that you had a weak link in your team.  Best of luck weathering the storm but as my lack of links to your company shows I continue to have no interest in what you have to say, only that hurt one of us and that will only make us stronger.

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