It can’t say it has been a pogrom – vendors listed into love it of course - but their WCM magic report received a very cold welcomed from the non-vendor-community:

On the 31^st of July, Gartner released its (in?)famous WCM Magic Quadrant.

A few days later, several blogs were published, most of them were not “very” enthusiastic:

CMS Watch: Looking beyond the magic quadrant to find the nitty-gritty

Brandinteractivism: Gartner’s WCMS Magic Quadrant is unfair to Open Source

Jon on Tech: What has the ministry of magic quadrants got against me

Word of pie: Am I buying a WCM solution or stock?

At least, (at last maybe), Irina Guseva just commented the release without arguing against the Gartner: Parsing Gartner’s 2009 Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management

And I found only one – relatively - positive comment from Kevin Cochrane into Jon on Tech’s blog…

Whatever I missed, there is a clear consensus against the MQ of Gartner.

Whereas I fully understand the critics – most of them are quite true – I cannot support any consensus against the way analysts are providing advice and I am not so sure it makes sense to focus at what Gartner does not say or the limits of Magic Quadrant.

By definition, an analyst is supposed giving unbiased critics, based on facts. There is always some interpretation or perception but analysts are mostly saying how things are. What could be criticized is what they are focusing at, or even they commercial policy to get revenues, or business model. Fine, but I don’t mind as long as their analyses are honestly performed.

Why? Because analysts are providing advice, to let people decide. Most of the time they are just providing advice (no offence), they don’t possess any theoretical and mystical “truth”. Reality, while sometimes sad, is more complex than just an analyst advice and decisions are far from being taken only according to facts and unbiased analysis.

So Gartner is providing reasons to people to explain their decision often based on so many criteria (including - and not covered by Gartner! - irrational fear/trust about a vendor, about some people – presales team they met for instance, – rarely but it happens too - personal interests, hidden agenda, – or whatever reason someone cannot often give to his/her colleagues / team / managers). So these reasons are not for some people the good ones? Fine, but why pretending it is useless to all? If it were, nobody would purchase Gartner’s reports.

Ah yes, of course, the vendors… their sponsors! OK I propose to add this new conspiracy to the long lists of the famous conspiracies.

More seriously, I don’t think there is an analyst “better” than another one (maybe a WCM vendor A can provide a better multilingual feature than a vendor B, but as long as an analyst is making his job honestly – analysis based on facts – by definition I don’t see the point comparing them). There are just analysts who provide more interesting /detailed information than others, according to me, to my requirements, and to my agenda.

The more different from each others they will be, the better it will be.

Open source mob disagree or is upset because we are making only the 4% of the revenues covered by Gartner according to their criteria? I just agree with Seth Gottlieb comment: “If buyers are still making decisions based on what Gartner says, they are probably not ready to benefit from open source anyway.” True, if you need a supplier which is an established company for years, soon but not yet, open source is maybe not for you. Period. You find the reason stupid? Sadly, sometimes it is a requirement (and this requirement upsets me so much, like traffic jams and French strikes when I used to live in Paris, but I have learnt to live with).

So where is the problem? At least we will see next year what is the WCM open source trend, ok according to Gartner, but a trend based on facts. At least open source vendors can also say “we are known and commented by Gartner”.

At least Gartner is a good indicator of the vendor corporate assets. Every buyer should be interested into corporate fundamentals. I never said they should decide only according to them, I just believe they should also look at them, take advice and as usual eventually make their mind.

So yes, I am a fan of Gartner.