What I can’t figure out is that if enterprises and the press tell me (and they do, constantly) that they pay little if any attention to funded studies, why do ISVs pay SO much cash for them? You wouldn’t believe the sums of money offered.

Just doesn’t make sense to me.

However there is a disproportionate amount of opinion whores out there, who are willing to give a great “analysis” to the highest bidder. I wish that analyst firms were required to mention who funded their reports – this would allow us, as consumers, to use a more critical eye when reviewing the report.

Rock, aka Lotus.Geek

The apocryphal example I cite in my original post is indeed one about SAN or NAS or similar but I get plenty of others about software, business process outsourcing and so on too. I chose that example because it was comparatively generic and I wanted to make a point without embarrassing any one particular analyst firm.

My scepticism is borne out by bitter experience. So many of these outfits go on endlessly about TCO and ROI and best practice and so very few appear to offer any connection, howsowever tenuous, to the real world.

We have a saying here, usually used to deride the teaching profession – those who can do, those who can’t teach. That seems to me to work pretty well for many IT industry commentators too.

Bottom line – it’s all about delivery. It is about what you can do, what you have done, what you will do, not what a supplier or consultant can sell to you.