back to article Stop worrying and learn to love COVID-driven digital transformation, says Gartner

As the nights draw in, COVID-19 lockdown restrictions tighten across Europe, and the number of cases in the US accelerates, techies who despair may turn to Gartner - the omniscient overseer of IT trends - for a bit of light relief. In its autumnal conference, set to be held in sunny Barcelona but now an online-only affair, the …

  1. Throatwarbler Mangrove Silver badge
    FAIL

    Lies, damned lies, and Gartner

    Yes, that has definitely been my experience. Management is just dying to open the purse strings to improve technology. They certainly haven't cut team sizes to the bone while dialing up expectations to literally unachievable levels and telling us we're lucky to have jobs so get back to work and shut up if you don't like it, peon. Certainly not. HAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA *choke* *sob* *chug* *chug* *chug* *thud*

  2. Erik4872

    Why you should pay attention to these jokers...

    Gartner and their lot aren't exactly the best prognosticators. However, there's one reason to listen to them with half an ear...your CIO is listening with both ears, on the edge of their seats. Gartner is the 21st century equivalent of "no one got fired for buying IBM." If your technology choices are in the Magic Quadrant, you cannot be blamed for any failures of any kind.

    I'm high enough in an IT organization to peer over the wall into the executive suite. While it is good that overall IT is being looked at as something other than a cost to minimize, keep in mind that this is only the "relationship" between the board and IT. If a new CIO comes in and promises a 50% savings by offshoring the entire IT department, that relationship will still be in place until something bad happens. The board doesn't care how anything works as long as it does, so I don't see how this translates to anything good for regular staff long-term. Especially when companies are SaaS-ifying and cloudifying everything, I'd think there'd be an even higher distaste for those pesky in-house employees with their salary and benefits and demands for time off.

    1. hoola Silver badge

      Re: Why you should pay attention to these jokers...

      Our management are always on conference calls with Gartner to get "industry trends" to justify the next batshitcrazy decision they make.

      These analysts are a curse on the industry but they make good money out of it. The issue appears to be one of fear, companies pay the subscriptions because they are scared that they will select something that is no good. The fact that Gartner Magic Quadrants are filled with products or companies that are no good escapes them. They can justify the decision to the board by quoting Gartner. Their jobs and bonuses are safe whilst the underlings having to implement the resulting shite get dumped on from all sides.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Why you should pay attention to these jokers...

        This is all true, but it's worse than that.

        Because Gartner pretty much lists all the companies you'd look at anyway in at least one magic quadrant or another. Oh sure, some are farther along the X or Y axis than others, but probably only Gartner knows for certain how they got there. Any websearch will probably find the same list of companies you'd want to check out.

        So they've got companies jockeying for position in the mq's, and big wheel corporate management paying for the data. It's quite the racket Gartner has going.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Why you should pay attention to these jokers...

      Spot-on. Always know what the enemy is thinking.

      Different but related, the marketing and sales people at $job are also quite interested in $companyname mentions on Gartner -- they collect magic quadrant dots like facebook friends.

      ... come to think of it, they probably care a lot about $company facebook friends and twitter followers too.

  3. a_yank_lurker

    Details, Details,....

    Macro views, even if they are correct, hide details for specific sectors. Some sectors are shrinking and I would expect the IT budgets to shrink as the revenue shrinks. Other sectors may see increase IT budgets temporarily as they transition to more remote working. Once this has been worked into the system budgets growth will slow and maybe even fall in some sectors. It's the details people are concerned about because that has the most impact on employment.

  4. This post has been deleted by its author

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    (but there are caveats)

    The main one, presumably, is that 99.9% of the stuff that Gartner produce is pure-quill bullshit?

    The other 0.1% is, of course, plain-old bull.

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