Does size implies relevance?

Dan Scholler argues in his blog (Dan Sholler's Musings) against the Valley View Ventures paper “IT Industry Analysis Myths: Business of IT Industry Analysis Revealed”.

One of the interesting points of the discussion (read the comments from James Governor and Fred Abott) is whether size allows the Gartner Borg to be more relevant by “leverage[ing] the conversations with hundreds of clients in a short period of time, whereas an independent analyst is unlikely to be able to access the same volume of information"”?

We’ve commented numerous times before that the Borg is acutely afflicted by siloisation: despite Andy’s comments, we maintain that Gartner analysts do not have incentives to work with consultants (this conversation may be sooo yesterday anyway) but also that the information exchange within Gartner is poor, both across services silos and also between DQ and RAS analysts. This would indeed negate Dan’s point.

The issues caused by that siloisation are chiefly about interaction inconsistency (both in content and quality) for Gartner clients. We heard several user and vendor customers complaining about getting different analysts for each engagement, and of very variable quality.

There is however hope as the Borg management seems to be aware of the problem. We advise Gartner clients to remain vigilant on this point and to assess regularly their progress.