deal architect

Fact or Fiction?: Next-gen tech vendors, buyers, analysts and AR

Our thriller, The AI Analyst has this disclaimer

This story is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, physical establishments, organizations, and locations are utilized only to provide an illusion of authenticity and are used fictitiously. All other characters and incidents portrayed in this book are fictitious and are not to be construed as real.

Having said that, characters in the book like Barry Roman, Patrick Brennan and Tony Batista and their companies Polestar, Oxford Research and Sheldon Freres are composites of many real-life people and organizations and they provide a glimpse at next-gen technology actors.

On the New Florence blog, I have excerpted sections from the book which show they are

Next-gen vendors
Polestar is a next-gen tech vendor which combines agentic AI with humanoid robots, drones, UAVs etc. Not just a software or silicon focus. Polestar also has an expansive definition of its verticals as each of the 800+ occupations the Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks. Read more about Polestar here

Next-gen buyers
Sheldon Freres is a next-gen buyer which knows how to monetize its mountains of unique vertical industry data . The tensions and shifts in economics between buyers and vendors of technology are brought out quite vividly in the book – read more here

Next-gen analysts and AR
Oxford Research doesn’t just produce “Golden Circles” (their version of Magic Quadrants) which a copilot called Curmudgeon helps generate. They also have labs which test products and their security vulnerabilities. Their focus is not just IT, but energy and other STEM disciplines and they have a global reach. The book also describes next-gen Analyst Relations. Read more here

Also, Sam Gupta interviewed me for his video channel here  and I mentioned readers should not just view our book as merely as a fiction mystery (which it most certainly is) but also as a vision of our fast changing technology sector.

A conversation with Satya

Satya Nadella of Microsoft has been in the press quite a bit recently with his comments that we have moved to the age of digital agents and they will cause the end of SaaS and broadly other business applications, which he says essentially only provide skin deep services front-ending databases – create, replace, update, delete (CRUD)

Whenever I hear “end of” or “death of” something, it triggers for me two other thought leaders:

• In 1989, Francis Fukuyama, then deputy director of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff predicted the fall of Communism and the world beyond in an article titled “The end of history”. He was mocked by world leaders like Margaret Thatcher and history has certainly not ended with Hamas and Latin gangs causing chaos and Putin and Xi among others having evolved a new form of capitalistic communism
• In 2003, Nicholas Carr stirred up our industry with his Harvard Business Review article “IT doesn’t matter” and a book similarly titled. He was similarly mocked and the reality is CIOs have become even more strategic with large digital transformations, security challenges, and now with management of hyperscaler clouds and with massive AI budgets.

In their defense, both Fukuyuma and Carr were pointing to inflection points, not “endings”. So I would read Satya with a similar lens – he is pointing to a transition point, not a wall we are about to crash into.

And Satya is only pointing to the obvious. As I wrote in From BOPS to FAANG to the Magnificent Seven enterprise application vendors and their services partners have gradually but precipitously slipped in market leadership over the last 3 decades.

Satya has certainly earned the right to opine on the trajectory of the industry. Watch this fascinating conversation with Bill Gurley and Brad Gerstner. Satya has taken the Azure cloud business from $1 to 66 billion in revenues. He has added $3 trillion to Microsoft’s market cap. His early investment in OpenAI was brilliant. He is humble enough to talk of the “winner’s curse” where competitors can sneak up, duplicate success in a heartbeat. But the really intimidating part for his competitors is towards the end when they talk about model scaling and over 60 data centers across the globe and massive capex spend of nearly $70 billion in 2025. No wonder Satya mostly names his Mag 7 compatriots (he alludes to the Mag 8 to include OpenAI) like Elon, Jensen, Sam and Mark in his comments, not any of the application vendor execs.

I have met Satya a couple of times, and would love the opportunity to take the conversation further with more of an application and business use case perspective : who would train the new world of agents, where would the training data be sourced from, where are we going to provision the humongous energy needed to run power hungry GPUs and data centers etc.

Here are 5 areas I would love to discuss with him given the changes the new US administration is likely to bring to the global economy, and based on research we did for the fiction book we have just released, The AI Analyst

• Tariffs will likely lead to more manufacturing, varied logistics and related robotics and sensors in the US. Immigration changes will lead to more automation opportunities in farming, construction and other sectors. Healthcare is going to see plenty of scrutiny. There is already a debate on H-1B visas and impact on IT outsourcing. Most of the agents today in the markets are back office and IT-centric, and mostly Western economy focused. How are they going to help in operational areas on the shop floor, the operating room, the fields etc.? How are they going to be able to help with the exotic taxes, payment protocols, customs and other compliance requirements being dreamt up by BRICS and other fast growing economies?
• Polestar, the AI/Automation company in our book whose CEO, Barry Roman disappears, is a next-gen tech vendor which combines agentic AI with humanoid robots, drones, UAVs etc. Not just a software focus. Polestar has an expansive definition of its verticals as each of the 800+ occupations the Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks. Their solutions automate limbs, eyesight and other human faculties, not just cognitive skills. They sell solutions including warehouse bots and GPUs “as a service” but are very flexible in allowing customers to scale their use up or down. Is he seeing tech vendors who can come close with the unique domain expertise and faculties needed for each of these occupations? That unique worker productivity is where the buyer ROI is acutely seeking.
• The book also has a next-gen technology buyer in a NYC financial institution, Sheldon Freres which knows how to monetize its mountains of unique vertical industry data. The tensions and shifts in economics between buyers and vendors of technology are brought out quite vividly in the book. As Patrick Brennan, the analyst character summarizes “Given how expensive GPUs and good AI talent is likely to be for the next few years, enterprises will prioritize unique products and market-insight projects, like drug discovery, mineral insights, product design advantages, trading patterns, etc. Smart customers will protect that data for themselves, train their own large language models, or LLMs, and commercialize that data asset. Vendors will continue to generate proposals, job descriptions, demand forecasts, etc. with their AI—clearly useful stuff, but not deserving significant premium pricing. We need to be associated with the first group of customers, the smart ones.” How are vendors going to adjust to a coming marketplace where their customers have the monopoly on deep domain specific training data and want to be compensated for it?
• How are we going to source energy for our massive inference, quantum and other computing while monitoring our emissions? Our utilities have barely been able to keep up with growing EV demand. Even in Germany which has invested trillions over 50 years on wind and solar, renewables barely meet half of their total energy needs. Where does he see next-gen nuclear in the mix? What about carbon capture and hydrogen harvesting? Do we need a new breed of utilities which are as ambitious about capex spend as the Mag 7 have become? At this point our utilities appear to be a major bottleneck and their infrastructure is incredibly dated.
• Technology buyers are also going to be consulting with a new breed of analysts like Patrick. His firm, Oxford Research doesn’t just produce “Golden Circles” (their version of Magic Quadrants) which a copilot called Curmudgeon helps generate. They also have labs which test products and their security vulnerabilities. Their focus is not just IT, but energy and other STEM disciplines and they have a global reach. As Patrick tells his colleagues at an Oxford offsite “COVID, the Ukraine war, climate change, and massive digital transformations have made many vertical edge applications viable—telemedicine and personalized medicine in healthcare, EV battery management and billing in utilities, intelligent returns and reverse logistics around eCommerce, direct-to-consumer and related last-mile, small-lot logistics in consumer sectors, CPQ for industrials to handle complex outcome-based pricing which bundles products’ spare parts, all kinds of monitoring and maintenance services . . . the list is virtually endless.” The conversation around AI is increasingly going to be with much savvier business executives, not just about technology speeds and feeds. As Tom Siebel of C3.ai recently said “Silicon will get commoditized. It always gets commoditized. Infrastructure will get commoditized. It always gets commoditized. What doesn't get commoditized in the long run are the applications and that's where C3 AI plays.” And to my knowledge, even Tom does not have anywhere near the depth of vertical capabilities I describe above.

Would love to get Satya’s perspective on the coming changes in our industry from his perch. I loved his demeanor in the Bill and Brad show. It was an unusually long session but he came across so comfortable, confident and articulate. A true industry leader.

Burning Platform: Analyst Relations at Startup and Scaleup vendors

For the 127th episode of Burning Platform, we host Robin Schaffer of Schaffer AR. She guides  smaller vendors – especially Startups and Scaleups - on navigating the world of Industry Analysts

In a fast moving conversation, we discuss

• How little the average entrepreneur at a small vendor knows about the Analyst world, even the larger firms like Gartner.
• How to use analysts for competitive and market intelligence. not just for influence
• The “pay for play” perception around analysts
• How she helps her clients navigate the explosion of boutique analyst firms
• The wide range of formats analyst content is distributed in these days – reports, books, videos, podcasts etc.
• Why the time is right for the Analyst firms to reengineer the “hellish” RFI process they make vendors endure for their research reports when they should be relying more on the countless signals they themselves get from their clients.
• Her thoughts on my new book, The AI Analyst. She was one of a select group who received an Advance Preview copy.

We conclude with the observation that we pay too much attention to dots on quadrants – when they reflect merely the tip of the iceberg – and forget that it is the result of thousands of interactions between humans.

Very nicely done in a little over half an hour.

Fiction and the Future of our Sector

‘Tis the season for forecasts for 2025. I have never been a fan of one year forecasts. Few trends mature in that short an interval. However, most of my books look further ahead. Our new book, The AI Analyst, is a fiction mystery, but in many ways, it looks at the future of technology vendors, buyers and analysts especially against the backdrop of the current wave of AI. I will come back to that in a minute.

For this thriller, my co-author, Kimberly and I took pains to create fictional characters which in each case are composites of 4-5 real people we know. Given that, one of the most heartening comments we have received is “by the book’s conclusion, there are a good dozen of (characters) that the reader knows on some essential level and actually cares about” Watch this interview with Paul Greenberg on the back story of the book and how it required an intense focus on human emotion in terrifying, joyful, and humorous scenes. I also shared with him my belief that products and places are also great story tellers and we have plenty of each in the book.

We wanted the book to be entertaining to a wide audience and think we have hit that goal. We are grateful for the early reviews people have been posting on Amazon, Goodreads, other book sites and in direct feedback from those who read advance copies.

A long-time tech executive commented “It's an intriguing mystery, but I'm really impressed with how well the authors captured the tech industry. The billionaire personalities, the corporate culture, the personnel drama and how evolving technology keeps moving the pieces around.” Another industry veteran said. “The vivid characters, the corporate dynamics, and the portrayal of evolving technology were spot on. It's a page-turner that I couldn't put down, and I appreciated the mix of humor and drama.“

Many liked the coverage of analyst world. As one commented “it shines a light on the activities and dynamics of technology analysts – an interesting and impactful milieu which most people are unfamiliar with. These analysts/consultants work closely with technology producers to evolve the markets, hone the offerings, inform the public, provide a feedback loop to industry, and much more. One of them, whom the title refers to, is central to attempting to solve the mystery.” A long-time PR practitioner observed “At the heart of it is the analyst – that unique individual who sits in the eye of the hurricane, making sense of what is real and what is not.” An Analyst Relations coach commented “I Inhaled it in about 2 days. So fun to see our industry up in lights.” A CIO wrote “Most of us use analysts work without any understanding of their world. In this enjoyable read the author conveys a deep understanding of the analyst’s universe against a rich and entertaining mystery.” An Analyst commented "I can't wait for the movie adaptation, as I'm sure there is a script in there somewhere! "

Others like all the AI and other automation technology – copilots, digital agents, robots, drones, GPUs and LLMs - we have in the book. There are also sections on ethics of AI, impact of automation on jobs and other AI angles. As a former Gartner analyst commented “The story both educates you on what the AI age brings in terms of benefits and peril. Concealed in a thriller format is a primer on AI and the tech industry, where you can be entertained and learn at the same time.” A 30-year vendor veteran observed “This was my second fiction book on AI, but the first one (I read) was before the breakout of ChatGPT. Now this stuff is real. With the amount of money flowing through the AI space, it's not a stretch to imagine the eccentricities, maneuvers, and clandestine tactics of the various players.”

Some like the many sidebars. As one commented “woven into the text are themes of urban blight, ecological disaster, robotics and other automation, criminality on all levels, vying generations, California vs. Florida as places to dwell or flee from, and many other glistening strands.” Still others like the coverage of Western China, the rituals of an Indian wedding and other strands.

Others like the Silicon Valley settings in the book – Pebble Beach, Half Moon Bay, the wildfire, the Winchester Mystery House and many others. As one said “As a native Californian who spent 35 years living in the Bay Area, in Palo Alto and Woodside, working at Stanford, SRI and IFTF, this was a fun read. I enjoyed the story, in between a ton of memories, memes and tropes”. Another said “As a former Silicon Valley-ite myself, I love the characters in this book. I feel like I was in the room with some of these people during some of these events.” Another said “There are plenty of insider nuggets about the rarified world of the upper echelons of the Bay Area and its tech industry denizens woven into a great page turner.” Others love the museums, restaurants and other settings on the other side of the country in the Tampa Bay area.

Long and short, the book is very close to real life. And we believe it is also a harbinger of big changes we see coming to our industry.

Polestar, the AI/Automation company whose CEO, Barry Roman disappears, is a next-gen tech vendor which combines agentic AI with humanoid robots. Not just a software focus. Polestar has an expansive definition of its verticals as each of the 800+ occupations the Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks. Their solutions automate limbs, eyesight and other human faculties, not just cognitive skills. They sell solutions including warehouse bots and GPUs “as a service” but are very flexible in allowing customers to scale their use up or down. Lots of other interesting twists we bring out about the company and many of its executives.

Similarly, Oxford Research is a next-gen analyst firm. Patrick Brennan, their lead analyst is embedded in the FBI search for the missing Barry. Oxford doesn’t just produce “Golden Circles” (their version of Magic Quadrants) which a copilot called Curmudgeon helps generate. They also have labs which test products and their security vulnerabilities. Their focus is not just IT, but energy and other STEM disciplines and they have a global reach. As Patrick tells his colleagues at an Oxford offsite ““You heard from Tucker and Martha last night about how Gartner and others became dominant forces in our industry, but also how the time is right for a disruptor—and that could be us. Correction—it should be us. COVID, the Ukraine war, climate change, and massive digital transformations have made many vertical edge applications viable—telemedicine and personalized medicine in healthcare, EV battery management and billing in utilities, intelligent returns and reverse logistics around eCommerce, direct-to-consumer and related last-mile, small-lot logistics in consumer sectors, CPQ for industrials to handle complex outcome-based pricing which bundles products’ spare parts, all kinds of monitoring and maintenance services . . . the list is virtually endless.”

The book also has a next-gen technology buyer in a NYC financial institution, Sheldon Freres which knows how to monetize its mountains of unique vertical industry data in our age of AI. The tensions and shifts in economics between buyers and vendors of technology are brought out quite vividly in the book. As Patrick summarizes “Given how expensive GPUs and good AI talent is likely to be for the next few years, enterprises will prioritize unique products and market-insight projects, like drug discovery, mineral insights, product design advantages, trading patterns, etc. Smart customers will protect that data for themselves, train their own large language models, or LLMs, and commercialize that data asset. Vendors will continue to generate proposals, job descriptions, demand forecasts, etc. with their AI—clearly useful stuff, but not deserving significant premium pricing. We need to be associated with the first group of customers, the smart ones.”

As I do with all my books, I will be sharing excerpts over the next few weeks. Being a mystery, I don’t want to spill the plot so the excerpts will be short. I am of course biased but I would recommend you not wait for that drip feed of excerpts. Read the book now along with plenty of 2025 forecasts that are showing up from many of my colleagues. The automation we describe is going to be especially interesting with the incoming US administration. Tariffs will likely lead to more manufacturing, varied logistics and related robotics and sensors in the US. Immigration changes will lead to more automation opportunities in farming, construction and other sectors. Healthcare is going to see plenty of scrutiny. There is already a debate on H-1B visas and impact on IT outsourcing. A vendor like Polestar is going to thrive in that changing vertical environment.

The book is not a 2025 forecast, but it is definitely a perspective on the massive changes coming to our sector. You will see them from the eyes of characters which are fictional but you will likely recognize. As one commenter said about one of the Polestar executives “I really enjoyed the story, but sad you made the marketing guy such a buffoon. But I’ve met Chad :-)”

The book is available in eBook and print via various Amazon country sites – click on the badge on top left to get to the US book page. It will soon be available in other book channels. It should also be a fun reading assignment for group events such as Sales Kickoffs and executive retreats – contact us directly for bulk discounts.

Our fiction thriller: The AI Analyst

You may have read one of our innovation centric books – The New Polymath, The New Technology Elite or Silicon Collar

Or thought leadership books we have helped tech executives write – Business as Unusual with SAP, The Digital Enterprise or Moment of Service

Or one of 3 in the SAP Nation series

Our 10th one is a different genre – it is a mystery with an AI angle. Also differently, it is a collaboration with a lady co-author.

Patrick Brennan is a technology industry analyst who knows the key players in Silicon Valley, what they're working on and with whom. His former boss and longtime mentor, Barry Roman, charismatic billionaire CEO of Polestar, a major AI/automation firm, is missing. Patrick offers to use his industry knowledge and history with Barry to assist FBI and local detectives on the case. The investigative team quickly finds that Barry has as many enemies as friends. Suspects include his estranged wife, a disgruntled former executive, Chinese intelligence, the Mob, and many more.

Amazon today opened pre-ordering for the eBook version of the book – click on the badge on left to read more about the plot and to order. The book will be released next week in time for your holiday enjoyment and for Santa's deliveries . It will be available across other digital and paper channels in the next few weeks.

I had shared advance copies with a fairly diverse group of your peers. The early reviews have been varied and excellent.

"As a veteran of the tech industry, I was delighted to see the intrigue that has long been a part of our industry woven into this exciting thriller. It’s captivating for both those interested in technology as well as the twists and turns of every good story."

Bill Hewitt
6-time CEO and technology industry executive, advisor and investor

"Ooh! I got an early Holiday gift... an advance copy of Vinnie Mirchandani and Kimberly McDonald Baker's new book, The AI Analyst. It's about an industry analyst who solves a crime with his sharp as a tack analytical skills. Inhaled it in about 2 days. So fun to see our industry up in lights."

Robin Schaffer
Founder, Schaffer AR

"The book weaves an intriguing mystery through an accurate and insightful description of the past, present and future of the high-tech sector."

John Wookey
Long time enterprise software executive at Accenture, Oracle, Salesforce and SAP and adviser to a number of startups

"What a romp. What a re-education. As a native Californian who spent 35 years in the Bay Area, mostly living in Palo Alto and Woodside, working at Stanford, SRI and IFTF, this was a fun read. You reminded me of my daily drive up Redwood Gulch when you mentioned Bear Gulch, a favorite hiking area. I enjoyed the story, in between a ton of memories, memes and tropes. I'd highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn about the future with AI, space mining, personal medicine, next gen foods....as well as current foods popular in Silicon Valley. What's your recommendation for great Indian take out? I'd also recommend this for anyone wanting to know how marketing works at a tech company -- all facets of marketing and sales with every acronym soup mentioned from MQL and SQLs. Or anyone who is an analyst wanting to know the latest and greatest analyst tools and processes. And, I loved being reminded of all facets of the Winchester Mystery House as well as Hindu wedding traditions. Lots of details that delighted. My only criticism is that few would use Kaiser for medical care -- maybe maternity, but not for trauma or any other specialty. Not when they could use UCSF, UC Davis, Stanford, or even Good Sam."

Lexy Martin
Long time Californian HRtech researcher

"A tale of digital heroism straight from tomorrow's headlines. Tech industry prophets, Silicon Valley wunderkind, overseas hackers, and today and yesterday's organized crime, motivated law enforcement combine in a mix of deftly portrayed characters. The story both educates you on what the AI age brings in terms of benefits and peril. Concealed in a thriller format is a primer on AI and the tech industry, where you can be entertained and learn at the same time."

Tim Tow
Former Gartner Analyst

"The plot is so close to real life! If we want to know how this world works, we have to step back and understand it. This gives us a good opportunity. I believe one day soon this is going to be a movie... can really feel it."

Judith O’Callaghan
Global ERP Advisory, Brisbane, Australia

"The book is an intriguing mystery that perfectly captures the nuances of the technology industry. The vivid characters, the corporate dynamics, and the portrayal of evolving technology were spot on. It's a page-turner that I couldn't put down, and I appreciated the mix of humor and drama. Well done."

Benjamin Beberness
Veteran utility and energy sector technology executive

As I have done with previous books, I will be regularly excerpting portions of the book on my 2 blogs and on Instagram. To not ruin the plot, I will be a bit more selective in what I share from this mystery. Still there is plenty to share about the wide range of global locales in the book, how Polestar is a next-gen vendor for the coming world of agentic AI and humanoid robots, how Oxford Research is a next-gen analyst firm with its labs, copilots and digital agents and with uber-smart and courageous analysts like Patrick Brennan and other tidbits from the over 300 pages which got left on the cutting table.

Burning Platform: Analyzing the Analysts

For the 120th episode of Burning Platform, we host John Taschek, Chief Market Strategy Officer at Salesforce.

We go through his two decades at the rocket ship called Salesforce and how he has handled industry analysts differently than most other vendor executives.  His humility through out the conversation is striking.

I ask him how he got comfortable with boutique firms and independent analysts when most others prefer to deal with institutional analysts like Gartner and Forrester. His philosophy is he prefers to rely on the knowledge and the curiosity of the individual. and not the firm.

“Instead of tiering the analyst firms, why don’t we tier the analysts? That opens up the world quite a bit when you get away from just Gartner or just IDC. You look at all the independent analysts who have really unique point of views. I did it when Salesforce was very young and we could learn a lot from individual analysts, but I have never shifted from that position.”

We discuss how he has benefited from being on the Product side of the business versus the Marketing side

“I pushed early on to be on the product side. Because being closer to the product gives you a whole bunch of benefits when you are talking to analysts. You have more collaboration with the product teams, which are developing the strategy. I was against being positioned in marketing or comms… because that’s much more outbound. I didn’t want to be a pitch factory, just saying stuff about what we did and how great we were.”

We cover the massive new opportunity around Generative AI and the huge growth in their Data Cloud. We also spend a few minutes on monetizing data and impact on trust, emerging global opportunities and my upcoming fiction book – a thriller where an analyst helps the FBI around the disappearance of a Silicon Valley AI billionaire.

We discuss improvements he would like at analyst firms (too many silos across analysts, the “walls” between the sales and research sides of the firms) and the fact that “the bigger firms have great analysts who are doing great research. But overall, they are seen as safety nets for decision makers.”

As I mentioned earlier, his humility shines throughout. It is a truly enjoyable 40 minute conversation with plenty for both vendor executives and analysts to learn.

"Being an Analyst (and Vendor AR) in a Chaotic Time"

Paul Greenberg invited me to one of his video channels to “analyze the industry analyst market” especially in a time of so much change.

Watch the whole conversation below. We cover a lot of ground:

• The history and evolution of industry analysts
• Where analysts have done well
• Where analysts are not leading the market: I share examples around 3 areas – vertical edge applications that have become viable in the last few years, localization in a dramatically changing global landscape, high payback Gen AI use cases
• How IT analysts compare to geopolitical advisers and energy and other vertical analysts who are handling even more volatile landscapes
• How vendor AR needs to itself evolve – get a balance between influence and intelligence they should expect from analysts
• Why vendor AR needs to evolve beyond 30 year old market categories and the “institutional” analysts  

As Paul mentions we could have gone much longer. If we had, I would have worked in a few more comments

• I talk about the massive impact Gartner had in the 90s, and I should have also mentioned how influential they were in highlighting the Y2K challenge, including doing briefings for the US Congress.
• People say Gartner is $6 bn in revenue - 7X as large as when I was there in the late 90s, ergo it is even more of the 800 lb gorilla in the sector. Not really. It has consolidated the market – made 25+ acquisitions since. As we have seen with vendors like IBM and Oracle, past acquisitions are not a good indicator of contemporary relevance unless you invest heavily in changing markets and new products
• I should have mentioned a fourth dimension where analysts need to step up - accelerating customer migration to new architectures and covering automation in such migrations. It is shocking after 25 years of cloud computing how many customers are stuck with on-prem and custom developed applications.
• I highlighted some of the strategy firms in the 80s like Nolan Norton and Index and the Big 8 accounting firms which were influential in technology decisions. I should have pointed out today’s influencers include strategy firms like McKinsey, Bain and BCG, VC firms which are funding new market categories and many more new players
• In the section about globalization, he mentions how NetSuite was a leader in localizing for several countries. That momentum has slowed down just when it needs to accelerate. Localization covers the UX to include scripts (right to left, double byte characters), tax, sustainability and other compliance, local support and partners etc. SAP towers over other application vendors with its slate of countries supported, regional user groups and on many other metrics.
• Paul asked me somewhat rhetorically how analysts can change and lead. I say that was rhetorical because no one told him, me and others to start writing blogs or books, generate tons of video and social media content over the last two decades. But we did, and we should not need reminders to lean into new areas given the massive changes and turmoil we live in. No industry or geography is unchanged. There are plenty of market signals that analysts and vendor AR need to evolve – rapidly and dramatically.

Industry Analysts - in a time of upheaval

I watched a replay of a webinar run by Carter Lusher and Duncan Chapple which focused on Gartner’s and Forrester’s recent earnings and their influence on technology markets. Both Carter and Duncan are long term watchers of IT Analyst Firms and if you are into “analyzing analysts” you will find the replay available here pretty interesting.

They touch on revenues, events, number of salespeople, reprints of research reports and other metrics as measures of an analyst firm’s “influence”. One perspective Carter presented “Gartner explicitly said for the first time that 75% of their contract value are in users. So this is all about the end users, and the influence on buying. On the other hand, Forrester has been stagnating for a long time.”

I run into Gartner, Forrester and IDC analysts on a regular basis at vendor events. I have watched firms like Constellation and Diginomica mature over the last decade. We analyze technology markets, not analysts and there we get plenty of independent input from work on our books, video series, advisory projects etc. So, I will defer to Carter and Duncan – their analysis of analysts “in the moment” is spot on.

However, I am working on a project which looks at the history of IT and of industry analysts and how in some ways we may be coming full circle to the dawn of enterprise technology. In the last couple of years I have also studied research for other projects from energy and healthcare analysts, and geopolitical advisers. So it has been interesting to see how IT industry analysis has evolved (or not) since my time at Gartner from 1995-2000.  

First let me explain my “full circle” comment. In the 80s and earlier, corporations truly did not understand the power of “data processing” or how to account for its costs and payback. Consulting firms like Index, Nolan Norton, Booz Allen and others helped companies with such analysis.  Analyst firms – which blended publishing and light consulting/advisory - weren’t popular yet. Most applications were built, not bought. Packaged software had its own convoluted acronym – COTS – Commercial Off the Shelf.

In many ways, we are back in that world. Clearly Generative AI is causing major upheavals. However we have been going through other megatrends tumbling into each other for the last decade – massive digital transformations, COVID, Ukraine-driven energy shock, climate change, supply chain and labor chaos. It's trite to say it, but it has been relentless upheaval.

And we are back to where many executives are baffled by the complexity of technology and don’t know its real cost or payback. Suites were supposed to cover wall to wall processes across the enterprise. Many companies have ended up with 50, 70, 90 surround applications around these “suites”. Cloud computing was supposed to be the end state, yet 70 to 80% of vendor’s customer bases stick to their old, rusting previous generation applications even as vendors guilt them of “technical debt” and warn them of recruiting challenges and compliance risks. We are back to building many applications. In fact, for many the most promising use case for Gen AI  is developer productivity. They find very few vendors have COTS solutions for their changed industries and global regions.

In this world, consulting firms like Bain, BCG and McKinsey are helping companies with technology strategies more than analyst firms. VC firms have led the way defining new operational metrics for startups and defining new market categories much more so than market watchers.

I hear from buyer executives: analyst firms still sell FUD and insurance. “You can tell your board you followed our recommendations”. We did that decades ago. Today, that’s lazy, un-customized advice.  

In my 5 years at Gartner, I estimate I did 10,000 “GAMECs”. That was an internal log of every query call we did with  a client. They would be looking for Y2k compliant applications and ask us to validate their short list, or rely on us for negotiation advice or for help identifying the right SI for their implementation. The subject matter varied from call to call, but with so many data points our Magic Quadrants wrote themselves. We truly had our finger on the pulse of enterprise customers. Now I hear vendors complain that analyst firms instead have them take months to fill out surveys that they use to create their MQs and MarketScapes. What happened to first-party conversations with decision makers?

In 2000, when I left Gartner, its revenues were under a billion. Last year they were just shy of $6 billion. However, much of that has come from over 25 acquisitions Gartner has made since. Many of Gartner’s acquisitions like AMR and CEB extended its vertical and business process capabilities, but have they used that to reshape their definitions? My little firm has been tracking edge applications in verticals and emerging markets as the world re-globalizes. Surely the analyst firms can do similar and dramatically broaden their definitions for market categories they launched a decade or two ago?

I have heard vendors complain they find ex-CEB folks have process excellence but very little knowledge of their products or that of their competitors. They say Gartner acquisitions have not been fully integrated even after years and the advice is consequently fragmented. Don’t you hear about similar slow integrations at acquisitive software vendors?

Some of the first few advisory projects we did at Deal Architect showed us how many professionals beyond industry analysts are involved in a software decision. It led me to write about the “thousand points of influence”.

Gartner had a remarkable run in the 90s. Concepts like Hype Cycle, Total Cost of Ownership, Service Oriented Architectures are impactful even today. The application group I was part of defined market categories like ERP and CRM which have similarly survived. We were encouraged to challenge, not just praise vendors or go along with fashionable industry commentary. I don’t see that kind of “bravery” in IT analysis any more. Even fellow bloggers focus more on reporting from vendor events and doing cutesy social media stuff.

In contrast, I do see some spunk in energy analysis and in geopolitical advice. Those analysts do so even as they are under a lot of pressure to support woke political positions and to not piss off ruthless dictators around the globe.  IT market analysts, in contrast, are afraid to offend far less powerful vendor executives or bureaucrats.  

In my Gartner “boot camp” in 1995 I heard a comment from a truly curmudgeon analyst -“Sacred cows make the best hamburger”. It has stayed with me for the last 3 decades.  We all need to adopt that critical mindset about the industry, for governmental mandates and about our analyst community. We look silly otherwise with so much upheaval around us.

Gartner and Oracle: Why I am missing their major events this week

Analyst Cam: CRM Watchlist

As we have moved to virtual briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission) as part of my Analyst Cam series.

This time it is Paul Greenberg, Managing Principal, The 56 Group, LLC. He summarizes the results from his latest CRM Watchlist survey. He is a repeat guest and was last on the Burning Platform episode where we discussed generational shifts in content creation and distribution.

This is the 19^th edition of his signature, annual project. He describes how the effort has evolved over the years. Lot of factors go into his scoring and they change every year. As he says, he looks at a vendor’s strategy and scores it on how well they executed on what they said they would. He then measures the impact they had on the market. Impact as a company – so not just their architectural excellence or financial performance or social responsibility posture. And it is based on the vendor’s stated strategy and market focus – which allows smaller vendors to be evaluated fairly depending on how they delivered against their geographic, vertical or size of customer focus.

He does factor in what he calls “intangibles”. His scoring for that category is a bit less transparent considering how much he guides vendors about the others. But he shares one nugget - he deducts points for “competition bashing”. Good for him.

He is tough and thorough, but very fair. Does not matter if you are a client of his or a close friend. This year, he evaluated 59 vendors reading every word of the 4,682 pages (yes!) if they were submitted to his guidelines. It is a testament to his market impact that vendors spend so much time and effort on their responses.

He has three winning categories -Winners, Winners with Distinction, and Elite. Only a handful have qualified for the Elite designation over all these years. There were 4 winners with Distinction this time around – Oracle, ServiceNow, Thunderhead and Zoho. He discusses another 12 in the Winners tier. Zoho scored highest in total this year. It also submitted the longest response at 259 pages. Paul insists there is no correlation between size of the response and his scoring.

He also shares the vendors who scored highest for each of his categories and summarizes with 4 promising and 2 concerning trends he gleaned from this year's responses.

I have run competitive evaluations of software vendors and outsourcers for many a client. At Gartner, I ran similar structured reviews for Magic Quadrants and other long-form content. I feel no shame saying I did not ever come close to evaluating 50+ vendors or reading 4000+ response pages for a single deliverable.

Next year, Paul says will be the final Watchlist. I suspect he will get an even larger population of vendors who pay homage by participating. In the blog post he said “Since this upcoming one is the very last one so, if I'm you, I'm registering to take a crack at it. Even if most companies don't win the award, they more often than not appreciate the exercise that you go through to put together the submission because it, when completed, gives you a holistic look at your company that you otherwise do not have.  It's worth it for the workout.”

I will absolutely bring him back for to describe the process for the 20th in the series. In the meantime, I need to have him back around his other passion – professional sports. We can discuss Tom Brady’s “un-retirement”, the return of baseball after a near shutout and so much else.