Do IT managers and staffs always buy the IT in the upper right quadrant of the Gartner chart, or with the highest market share in an IDC spreadsheet, or riding the biggest wave in a Forrester report?
 
The answer is no and for the same reason, you probably shouldn't get all your IT research from the same source. If you are thinking of expanding your use of IT and IT market research, or simply want to better understand what you are using currently, consider the various firms' heritage, focus and resources, as well as a review of the types of analysts they employ.
 
Understanding IT Research Firms' Heritage, Focus and Resources
 
Peggy O'Neill, senior vice president, analyst relations, at Hill & Knowlton (H&K), points out that all the leading IT research/analyst firms have "a different focus and different resources." For example, IDC is known for market research into market size and share and what you want from IT suppliers next year. Gartner, on the other hand, was founded to provide you procurement and implementation advice. The Yankee Group concentrates on telecommunications products and services. And the list goes on.
 
To be fair, over the years the leading research firms have tended to cross into each other's territory. Gartner bought Dataquest, which is similar in heritage to IDC. IDC started its industry-centric Insight companies, which are more like boutique analyst firms. Boutique analyst firms are more noted for their marketing expertise with suppliers than with advising IT users. For example, Forrester acquired Jupiter for its marketing strategy expertise to support vendor clients, matching Forrester's strengths with IT users.
 
However, given their heritages, their focus, and the analytical and survey resources they use, answers to what you might think of as the same technology question can differ greatly depending on which firm you use. Consider the differences in their own words, based on their Web sites.
 
Gartner says it delivers technology-related insight primarily to CIOs and senior IT leaders in corporations and government agencies as well as to business leaders in the industry and technology investors. Gartner claims 60,000 clients in 10,000 distinct organizations. IDC says "it provides market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets." There is a historical emphasis on markets. Forrester says its products and services are targeted to specific roles, including principally senior management, business strategists, and marketing and technology professionals at $1 billion-plus companies. The size of the client is important.
 
Using the largest analyst firms is not automatically the best choice. TekPlus is an IT analyst firm focused on providing strategic direction rather than either detailed advice or market research. In an interview on the Institute of Industry Analyst Relations blog, its managing director Dr. Mitul Mehta has an interesting take on some of these differences and the different choices available to IT users. He says: "In a way I see it (IT research) going back to its roots of pre-Gartner times when both specialist magazines and analyst firms were both highly influential but could come from the same company."
 
What he is referring to is the fact that IDC is part of the International Data Group, which is also parent of CIO.com, Computerworld and just about any IT publication ending with word "world." And there was a time when analyst firms were not needed the way they are today because the entire market consisted of IBM and the Seven Dwarves and Gideon Gartner himself had not yet left IBM and Oppenheimer to found the company that bears his name. Mehta believes globalization will have a major impact on IT research firms, causing a back-to-the-future movement in which small research firms such as his will get strategic projects where highly tuned advice comes from smaller analyst groups.
 
Research Firms Get Independent Access
 
H&K's O'Neill notes that one of the greatest advantages of using IT research firms is that their analysts have independent access to IT supplier executives, developers and technical staff that most enterprise IT users cannot get. You probably never see a supplier representative that has not been first fully briefed on exactly what to say by your local sales representative.
 
Independent analysts, on the other hand, not only get direct access but they typically access all the leaders in the top competitors in a market in a short period of time - depending on what research projects they are working on. This means they can cut through the propaganda much more easily than you.
 
Whatever source you choose, an IT research firm's analysis should exhibit a broad understanding of a supplier's road map, non-product-specific market-related problems the supplier is facing, and a strong understanding about trends three to five years out. But make sure the research firm you are considering is also talking to other IT people such as yourself even if they are not IT experts.
 
Some of the firms do that through focus groups involving a dozen or so IT users, some accomplish this in the natural progression of one-on-one consulting assignments, and others do large statistically significant surveys. The largest research firms conduct all three kinds of IT user contact but the individual analyst you deal with at an IT research firm might not be aware of all of the resources within his or her own firm.
 
Next, see a review of analyst characteristics in IT Research Analysts Are Independent but Stovepiped?