Had a nice chat the other day with an old acquaintance who previously held two interesting jobs: as a practice lead at a major technology analyst firm, as well as heading up "analyst relations" for a major vendor. This is not uncommon; there's a revolving door between staff at vendors and analyst firms.

We talked a bit about the institutional conflicts of interests when analyst firms consult for both buyers and vendors -- a primary frustration that drove him out of his analyst firm as well as me to found CMS Watch. (It's topic Alan has already plumbed here.)

We also discussed a related issue that strikes me as potentially more insidious for buyers. My colleague pointed out that software vendors typically don't spend money with analyst firms to bribe them outright. Rather, they purchase attention through which they can try to get an analyst to define the marketplace and customer challenges according to that particular vendor's approach.It's the vendor-analyst echo chamber game, designed to manufacture artificial demand. I've seen it first-hand. The script goes like this:

You might draw some parallels here with public relations. After all, doesn't the trade press get influenced the same way? I think there are two differences. First, in most of the world, there isn't money changing hands in media relations. Second, most media outlets are transparent about the source of their information and typically don't parrot vendor pitches as original analysis or broader marketplace trends. Sure, we've all seen reporters get manipulated, but it's more the exception than the rule.

If you sense some anger here it's because I've seen enterprise teams suffer as a result of this game. One of the larger boondoggles in this regard was the promotion of "Smart Enterprise Suites" ("SES") earlier this decade, when companies were encouraged to consolidate all their content management initiatives on a single uber-platform. Today you'd think that's crazy, and if you're a Web site manager you'd pale at the prospect of having to manage Web content via the corporate document management platform. But many enterprises went down that path, and paid a steep price for it.

In the end you can't blame vendors or analysts. It's their game, not yours. You have to take responsibility for your technology buying decisions.Had a nice chat with an old acquaintance who has served as both practice lead at a major technology analyst firm and as head of "analyst relations" for a major vendor... We talked about the conflicts of interests when analyst firms consult for both buyers and vendors... and we also discussed a related issue that strikes me as potentially more insidious...