Some of my former analyst colleagues have switched sides to the consulting part of Gartner because they prefer longer-term deeper engagements rather than the quick-hits that inquiry tends to represent.

But I would maintain it’s inaccurate to say that analysts don’t have the practical side of late-stage deal-sourcing. There are certain types of deals for which full-fledged consulting services are preferable, though, which is part of why Gartner maintains a TPI-style consulting practice centered around deal negotiation.

As I did on Phil’s blog, a couple points of clarification:

I think research-based vendor insights are very important: “…research like Gartner’s Magic Quadrant and Forrester’s Wave can be extremely valuable resources”. I also think the same of this particular MQ: “As usual, this Magic Quadrant (MQ) is thorough and well thought out.”

The key message of my original post is that the outcome of these vendor insights can be very different, depending on what position the researcher sits in. Having the ability to look broadly across thousands of customers via inquires produces one view, while looking deeply into hundreds of customers via on the ground consulting (the “tip of the spear” metaphor in my post) produces another view. Both are important, but may produce significantly different results.

In our opinion, the former is well suited to early stage buyers looking for broad insights. The latter is better suited to later stage buyers looking to make a decision. But both are important.

I’m eager to hear what others think about this viewpoint – agree or disagree. Either way, looking forward to more conversation about this in the future!

SJ

I managed to get hired and over the next four years I was exposed to a work environment that had a pretty decent representation of females in technical roles, the company had a pretty good culture of recognizing people for their ability without regard to their gender or other non-important factors. (There were excellent employees there who had purple hair or who brought snakes to work — gender was the least of our differences!) So much so that when I hear of sexist situations like the ones you have described above, I almost find it hard to believe it still exists.

I think this is a big problem with the “women in tech” issue: The field is still predominately male, and the attitudes of the men are shaped by their experience. Either they are used to diverse, inclusive environments and don’t believe sexism exists, or they are used to a male-dominated, hostile environment and think “that’s just the way the world is honey, get used to it.” Both find the existence of the other hard to beleive. Reminders like yours serve as a reality check for how far we still have to go.

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