Small and midtier IT shops are eager for help from the technology analyst and research industry. Sadly, those research firms are so focused on the largest IT shops that they fail to see the small and midrange clients that could really use their help.
My small information technology shop does no in-house development of any scale, yet it has a multimillion-dollar budget and needs to support more than 400 employees and more than 30 locations. We are always looking for ways to make better decisions with limited resources. To help solve this dilemma, our institution would like to leverage the technology analyst and research industry better. Firms like Gartner, IDC, or Forrester are the big players in this industry, and all could provide value and assistance.
We have many high-dollar vendor relationships, and our in-house datacenters need constant care and feeding. Additionally, due to our size, we can't afford to have high-level specialists in any one area. Covering 80 percent of something is pretty good, and we need external resources to call on for the other 20 percent.
Typically, the vendors we call on have a vested interest in trying to sell us something, be that more equipment or more service. The problem with the research firms is that they seem to be geared for bigger IT shops. Much of their analysis is focused on the larger players in each industry. We have tried them, or tried to try -- in some cases, I got added to email lists, but I got no contact. The research and analysis is top notch, but we got a lot of "have your Architecture/Business Analysis/PMO/Vendor Management (etc.) group look into…" When we pressed on how to get more value, we got a similar response about making interaction with the group part of those "IT sub-departments' responsibilities."
Well, those roles are not only not a subunit within my IT shop, but they are typically just part of a staffer's already heavily multitasked job function. And the way these research firms are set up, you typically pay a set price ("priced right for my operation" could be equivalent to more than 10 percent of my staffing budget), regardless of how much you use them. Further, we don't have time to determine how best to use them, because we're too busy.
This is the Catch-22 of these research firms: They would probably be most helpful to IT groups like mine that need their resources and feedback, yet they work best with the largest IT shops, which already have people focused on research, planning, and analysis functions full-time. Those big shops likely need the analyst firm only as a sounding board for conclusions or negotiations that are already somewhat under control.
My goal now is to find something more appropriate for our smaller shop. More and more free resources are evolving -- things like LinkedIn groups or blogs like this -- but they still require a lot of searching and planning. Regardless, for a well-defined need, they are becoming more useful.
In addition, smaller or more niche firms like Info-Tech, Ovum, or Yankee Group may be good enough for what we need, even if they don't have the resources of some of the bigger firms. And it seems like their focus (and cost) can be scaled more appropriately to what we can use. We also feel that, with the money we save on not utilizing the big research firms, we have some capacity to utilize some very specific consulting engagements and still have money left over.
Ultimately, I need to be in a position where I deal with each issue case by case, rather than having one resource for all potential IT issues.
Bottom line: There is still no easy answer. As the CIO for a small IT shop, I have come to realize that getting unbiased input for IT decisions will never be easy, and in the long term, my direction may be to convince my corporation to allocate more staffing for these activities.
Agreed, Mary. There's still quite a bit of room for diversity in small and midtier organizations. There's no one model.
One organization I worked for procured and setup configurations for clients. We were considered an enterprise-level client by the reseller who sold us IT equipment. But the equipment needs in-house were pretty small. Everything we needed for internal IT fit into one full-sized (33U) rack. Outside of individual PC's (laptops, desktops, whatever). With cloud and virtualization technologies, that might be cut in half.
I just don't believe that the big research firms understand the environment at small and midtier groups. They're certainly capable of it. But I don't see that vision currently in effect.
Good points regarding smaller businesses, but the midtier also has sizeable businesses as well, just not enterprise sized. And that's the segment that I am surprised the researchers aren't more interested in.
There are also smaller firms with enormous IT budgets. Some of the entertainment production firms come to mind.
Sure, Mary. Major firms have software (and hardware) needs that just don't apply, definitely at the low tier. That's here the majority of my experience lies. A bit at midtier. Let me give you an example:
Do you know of a single report out there by any major research group that goes over power and cooling needs for a "datacenter" that's actually little more than a closet?
I signed up for newsletters from APC once. I worked at a company with 20 employees, three servers, one NAS appliance, all sitting on wire-rack shelves in a side room. And I put all the smallest answers into the signup sheet.
I *still* get invited to webinars on multi-row datacenter cooling.
That's one simple example. The midtier just doesn't have the same needs. I don't see these big research firms even looking at that. We don't need smaller context. We need to have our particular concerns addressed.
Given the enormous cost of reports, it doesn't surprise me that the research firms are so cagey about sharing anything with press folk. It is difficult to get input from specific analysts at the big firms.
Yes, the prices of reports are very stiff. I often turn to a report, thinking it would be useful background, for an article, only to realize it has a stupendous price tag and couldn't possibly be worth it for me.
They probably are getting more common, Mary. I admit I turn more to community forums and professionally oriented social networking sites than to dedicated research firms like Gartner. So my experience is significantly limited.
But my experience is that those reports are being reduced in cost by further narrowing their focus. A smaller piece of of the big picture. Sort of like the $200 report I linked to in a previous response.
They may be able to cut up their larger research into smaller chunks and create more affordable output that way. But is the output of any real use to small and midtier groups? I'm distinctly unconvinced.
Actually, I've noticed that $500 reports are getting more common. Just a couple of years ago, it seemed the prices were much steeper. The amount charged for various kinds of information was just unbelievable.
I suppose that if you wanted market sizing numbers to work with, the information might be useful. Otherwise, to be quite frank, I think most IT pros could get a lot of info from free sources -- not to mention from their vendors.
I think it's a question of marketing and economics. I've worked mainly for small to borderline mid-sized enterprises for most of my career. Those execs cringe at $500 for a report.
And then, the two or three times that I've convinced my executives to budget for one of these reports, the report itself had little bearing on me or my organization. They were all oriented towards heavy-usage, high-transaction environments.
A 30 or 40-person organization, unless we're building the next Facebook, isn't ever going to use that kind of horsepower.
And none of my employers were building the next Facebook. :)
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