Shill season

Sam Varghese
Friday, 15 December 2006 03:37

Opinion and Analysis

 
Gartner then concludes that Apple is not growing in the "enterprise space" because it does not licence out its hardware production to any manufacturer, because it does not support its operating systems for as long as Microsoft does, and because it is too consumer oriented - it has too many applications installed as defaults.

This, in effect, means that OS X, which incidentally is based on the BSDs, cannot be locked down - or didn't Gartner think that is a logical conclusion to be drawn from such sweeping conclusions? Another sweeping statement in the study is this: "many companies dislike procuring PC hardware when there is only a single provider." Funny, but many companies do seem to like procuring all their software from one vendor. If they are trying to avoid vendor lock-in, that seems kind of schizophrenic, doesn't it?

The "study", by the way, costs $US195. Apple gets a kick in the behind. So does GNU/Linux. Windows comes out smiling. Gartner has issued dozens of studies over the years which have the same effect.

What's the point of such fluff? Here's a quote from an article in Information Week which says it much better than I could: "Gartner also is partly owned by investment companies that have stakes in tech vendors upon which Gartner is supposed to be casting a neutral eye. Silver Lake Partners, which owns 33% of Gartner, counts Michael Dell, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, and other tech-industry shakers among its current or former investors. Hedge fund ValueAct Capital owns more than 16% of Gartner and has owned as much as 11% of MSC Software, which Gartner views as a "challenger" in the market for product life-cycle-management software."

Independent studies? I think not.