I have a pretty old-fashioned view of what makes a good market analyst - has to be "friend of buyer' and be willing to take unpopular-to-vendor positions in public. And I happen to think many Forrester analysts hype their market categories, not analyze them. Not Ray Wang - who is not afraid to say, for example, software maintenance is overpriced. So, I am pleased to see him named "analyst of the year" in this survey.
James Governor and I don't agree on my definition of analyst - but he is so endearing and irreverent in person that I am pleased to see him (and his partner Michael Cote at Redmonk) also on the list.
It is good to see my old colleagues at Gartner, Nick Jones and Ed Thompson and Stephanie Moore of Forrester on the lists. I am surprised to not see Bruce Richardson of AMR on them. He has to be the most influential analyst in enterprise software.
Finally, it is interesting that Gartner is ranked 10th in relevance but 1st in importance. The surveyed audience was mostly vendor analyst relations folks. That's code for they cannot ignore Gartner, but wish it was nicer.
But then that would fail my definition of analyst.
James Governor and I don't agree on my definition of analyst - but he is so endearing and irreverent in person that I am pleased to see him (and his partner Michael Cote at Redmonk) also on the list.
It is good to see my old colleagues at Gartner, Nick Jones and Ed Thompson and Stephanie Moore of Forrester on the lists. I am surprised to not see Bruce Richardson of AMR on them. He has to be the most influential analyst in enterprise software.
Finally, it is interesting that Gartner is ranked 10th in relevance but 1st in importance. The surveyed audience was mostly vendor analyst relations folks. That's code for they cannot ignore Gartner, but wish it was nicer.
But then that would fail my definition of analyst.
