I am a buyer advocate, so my friends will think I am nuts for coming to the defense of Aberdeen which for years has been called a vendor "pay for play" analyst firm - a sentiment recently echoed in a WSJ column
I think most buyers have become savvy to analyst firm revenue models - and importantly, they have learned to balance out the influences- as I wrote here there are a thousand points of influence in a complex decision. Whether a direct vendor white paper or one summarized by Aberdeen or a research paper from Gartner - they all play an influence role. A small one, but a role.
IDC is almost completely vendor funded. So is the former Dataquest, now part of Gartner. And their products are mostly consumed by vendors. Relatively few buyers read their stuff. If Aberdeen stuff is being read by buyers to me that's goodness - even if they have a vendor funded model.
