Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Industry Analyst Awards
I have been known to periodically express negative opinions towards the work that industry analysts do but never get the opportunity to express praise when it is warranted. Yesterday, I had the opportunity to interact with several different industry analysts and started thinking about a taxonomy of sorts to classify from a customers perspective their value proposition.
One of the things that I did conclude is that the industry analyst community needs to invent an award system kinda like the Grammy's where end-customers in large enterprises can vote for their favorites. If such an award existed, I would nominate the following six as best in class:
James Governor of Redmonk: He has changed how industry analysts interact with customers and serves as a great example of using the blogosphere instead of sterile whitepapers that few can gain access to. His blog brings out the right balance of technology, society and personal interests without talking about topics I really hate such as baseball
Brenda Michelson of Elemental Links: If you are an employee of a large Fortune enterprise and SOA is part of your IT strategy then you may have ran across Brenda in a variety of forums. She is not simply sitting back collecting information but is actively engaging and enabling conversations between enterprises.
Gerry Gebel of the Burton Group: Calling out vendors in terms of interoperability is simply brilliant. By this simple act, I can also tell that Gerry has actually seen each of the vendors software he covers running for real and not simply living through the Powerpoints that other industry analysts often rely on.
Michael Cote of Redmonk: This guy must be in my head as the issues he discusses are spot on and represent problem spaces most enterprises today are struggling to figure out. Discussions around ITIL, CMDB, Systems Management and other operational considerations are much needed. Too much of the enterprise conversation unfortunately is focused on software development without an appreciation for operational aspects and Cote is keeping us all honest.
Lori Rowland of the Burton Group: She understands the need for secure coding practices. She understands where identity management vendors fall short. She understands the need for entitlements. She is 100% aligned with my own thinking...
Alan Pelz-Sharpe of CMSWatch: ECM vendors offer lots of products none of which adhere to modern software architecture and instead rely on hype of the business problem space in order to sell. Alan cuts through the hype of the minute and goes to depth that you simply will not find from other analysts in this space. Every AIIM member/vendor should be talking with him on a weekly basis. I hope that in future reseach he will dive deep into the notion of taxonomy management
Of course there are other analysts that I think should get awards. I will in the near future expand this list to my top ten...
| | View blog reactionsOne of the things that I did conclude is that the industry analyst community needs to invent an award system kinda like the Grammy's where end-customers in large enterprises can vote for their favorites. If such an award existed, I would nominate the following six as best in class:
Of course there are other analysts that I think should get awards. I will in the near future expand this list to my top ten...
