Saturday, October 18, 2008

IT Analysts opening their Kimono

There was a time when IT industry analysts would only provide information, opinion or data for a price. But it seems that in today's web 2.o world, they are exposing more of their thoughts in the form of blogs and other "free" information. I suspect that this is happening due to downward pressure on price (full subscriptions to analysts and reports for a year can be tens of thousands of dollars), plus the realization of the need to "market" their expertise and insights to a broader audience.

Here are some of my favorite, complementary, data center-related analyst info you can subscribe to:

Forrester: Great set of analysts and topics here. Check out their entire Blog Listings page to find the right IT industry slice for your taste.

Gartner: Gartner has a "blog network" page where it appears they've asked most of their analysts to do individual blogs, many of which are on various IT topics and technologies. And just so you don't think there isn't any overlap between analyst coverage, they also have a *very* complete blog and video covering Cloud Computing and Cisco's possible intentions, too.

IDC: I just discovered the "IDC Exchange" (which I wrote about earlier last week). They recently did a *very* nice multiple installment piece on cloud computing you have to check out. They've also recentely completed an analysis piece on Cisco and their possible cloud computing intentions.

Redmonk: I've known James Governor since my days at Sun. He runs a multi-topic blog called Monkchips which is insightful with a tinge of wry wit from across the Pond (It's also #3 on the list of Top Analyst Blogs). Michael Cote, another Redmonker, also has a quality blog (People over Process) on IT operations issues and more (BTW, Michael's Blog is #8 on the list)

Saugatuck Technology: I've been following their reports on SOA and related technologies, but they've been branching out. While not a Blog, they email out a very nice complementary summary of each of their extended reports in the form of "Research Alerts"

3 comments:

Michael said...

Thanks! I'm glad you like our blogs ;)

Anonymous said...

Glad you like the Gartner blogs. The current network is actually just an initial pilot -- we've got more than 600 analysts, so the current blog network represents less than 10% of our analysts.

I'm also covering cloud infrastructure, and I've been reading your blog with interest.

Ken Oestreich said...

Thanks Lydia. It would be great to let the "world" know as you add analysts and topics!