CIOs in tears? Gartner DELAYS Backup and Recovery Magic Quadrant report CIOs may - or may not - be reeling from Gartner's admission that the Data Center Backup and Recovery Magic Quadrant will be put on ice after a number of its big hitting analysts upped sticks to work for vendors. Flush with private equity dosh, startup Rubrik has tried to hire two senior researchers only to have one poached by …
Analysts from Gartner, Forrester, Ovum and the like hold an unnatural power over the sales and marketing departments of many vendors because the CIOs of the potential customers have to be able to wave an industry report under the noses of shareholders if things go wrong. So (having been on some of those meetings in my past) those sales/marketing staff really are incredibly willing to hand over incredible detail relevant for competitive insight. The vendors not hiring have good cause to be concerned about an immediate (no break) shift from senior Gartner analysts to leading the competitive team on a competitor, even if the NDAs should carry forward.
It does say something about an ex-analyst that they opted to put just about the most inflammatory job title imaginable in to the public domain though.
Yes, er, thanks Chris for quoting my off-the-cuff Twitter remark in that article. I'd like to make it clear that I have no personal issue with Ray Schafer or Rubrik (hi guys!) - it was more of a general observation about the grey area of employment between analysts and vendors.
Also, like most readers of The Register, I would like to point out that I have certain deep principles in regard to my employment - and that those principles can only be overcome by offers of large amounts of cash.
that Gartner doesn't have a clause in their analyst employment agreements preventing an immediate jump to a firm in the industry segment they've been analyzing - almost like a two or three-year non-compete you see for corporate execs. Maybe it's just really really hard to write something that would be enforceable.
In most countries it is quite difficult to keep somebody from working in an industry in which they are skilled and experienced. It's a civil liberty / right to work thing. In the UK, anything more than a year is typically considered "onerous" by a court of law - and therefore unenforcible. Even six months to a year is debatable.
Of course, it's possible to give your employees a lengthy notice period - and then pay them gardening leave when they quit. But that's expensive.
California makes it difficult to write enforceable non-compete agreements into employment contracts, but it's certainly isn't impossible.
The policy is to make it difficult for regular people to be kept away from their industry by asymmetric employment contracts(*). But when you job involves highly sensitive competitive information, rather than just advanced knowledge or skills in the field, the courts recognize non-compete clauses as valid.
I'm sure that Gartner was more concerned with analysts moving to a competitor, or setting up their own boutique firm. But the law (well, California law) sees that as ordinary worker choice within the field. Gartner isn't as concerned about an analyst leaving to work at a client, yet that's exactly what the law would allow them to enforce. (At least when Gartner agreed to keep the detailed client info confidential.)
* Will your employer leave the market when you depart? No? Yet they want you to work bagging groceries to avoid helping a competitor.. that's asymmetrical.
1) Rubrik = a bunch of smoke and mirrors. Nothing really unique or different other than a nice interface. The underlying technology actually quite sucks. Hiring away the Gartner MQ analyst falls in line perfectly with their historical strategy: all marketing. So much hype and so little substance - when people actually figure it out, Rubrik will be one of the biggest busts out of silicon valley. Only question is how long can they keep the valuation propped up with hype.
2) Gartner MQ = toast. This should pretty much be the nail in the coffin for Gartner credibility. If it wasn't already obvious that they reward the highest bidder / noisiest vendor, it definitely is now.
Gartner has been playing both sides for decades, and yet somehow their clients keep paying them money.
The end-user customers pay them for advice, and the vendors pay them because otherwise they never mentioned on market reports. And then pay them again to be moved around on the MQ, or to have a MQ defined that shows them as a market leader. And then pay them again because their competitor paid to be moved up in the rankings. And again to have a low-quality white paper written.
No, it did not work out for Pure Storage. 2 + years since IPO, and just barely starting to hit profitability. Differentiation has shrunk and the competition has caught up. Honeymoon days are over for Pure. Sitting on ~$20 stock price - just barely over the IPO price. Rubrik is following the exact same trajectory as Pure. Marketing hype, smoke and mirrors, and very little substance in the product beyond a scale out file system (not unique) and a fancy GUI (not unique) - at least Pure had a differentiated product with first mover advantage in the flash space. Rubrik's fate is going to be worse than Pure's because they have very little differentiation and unlike Pure, no first mover advantage either. Valuation will continue to go up because of momentum. With $200M+ in the bank, and big focus on marketing, it is not difficult to hire a bunch of smart sales and marketing guys to build a $1B+ valuation company, but it is very difficult to build a sustainable and profitable business for the long run. When they file for IPO, the founders will be rich no matter what, but wall st. will decide the fate of the rest. It's a pity that the Gartner Analysts are not seeing through this.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
