Vendors name rising analysts: Forrester, Gartner, Ovum, Aberdeen and Burton

Which analyst firms have increased their influence the post over the last year? Our 2006 survey of IT and telecoms vendors’ staff says that the answer is Forrester, Gartner, Ovum, Aberdeen and Burton — in that order: the results are shown on the right hand side.

Participants in the study received the results this morning, listing the results to this and the other questions we posed to vendors. If you’d like to buy our full analysis of the findings, drop us a line.

It’s an annual survey, which I first conducted in 2001. It asks vendors’ staff their opinions of analysts. As a former analyst, I find it especially interesting to see how one segment of the analyst firms’ customer base sees the changes in the analyst industry’s fortunes.

Of course, vendors’ views are partial. Our CIO surveys show that end-users have more divergent and nuanced views of the analysts. However, an aggregate of individual perceptions in the vendor community is very interesting. The sample size (52 executives) is neither huge nor tiny. There’s a lot of stability in the data, so we are pretty happy with the participation.

Of course, the usual health warning applies: perception is not reality. Most opinions are about the largest firms. Not every vendor comments on every firm. Different people can have the opposite opinion of the same firm. However, even if this survey is simply a subjective ‘weather-vane’, it gives a fascinating insight into vendors’ experiences and perceptions of the analyst firms they and their customers work with.

If you’d like to take part in the 2007 study, and get a free copy of the findings, just drop us a line.

P.S. One more interesting finding: the research shows that around a fifth of the people we surveyed thought Gartner was MOST independent of its commercial relationships; but also around a quarter thought Gartner was LEAST independent.