Our Philosophy

Our mission is to provide objective, in-depth analysis that enables senior people to make accurate decisions about how to get value from business applications.

To do this, we typically provide a mix of published research and consulting to our clients. We need to make what we know directly relevant, and we do this by talking to you. We are not a research publications firm — only. We are not a consulting firm — only. We do both.

Because we work for discerning clients, who expect us to understand their business, we are not a mass-market publications firm.

We believe that the material published by mass-market analyst firms is potentially compromised by the large amounts of money that they accept from software companies.

To insure our objectivity, we limit our income from software vendors, and we simply refuse to accept money for certain things. We also publish our rules of engagement for software companies.

The rules are:

• We do not take money for opinions. Our published research is not sponsored or paid by the software companies being reviewed. We do not do white papers.

• We keep all confidential information confidential. We do not do competitive analysis.

• We only accept money from software vendors for internal strategy consulting, requirements analysis, and educational events.

• The total amount of money we get from any individual software vendor is limited to $30,000/year. It is not unheard of for some mass-market analyst firms to get 50 times that much.

We are a different kind of analyst firm — in our philosophy, in our objectivity, and in our depth.