Although I've been in the computer industry for over thirty years, I've spent only thirteen years conducting IT research and analysis (seven years at other IT research firms and five years at Clabby Analytics).  The other IT research and analysis firms for which I worked were "vendor-focused", which means that the lion's share of their revenue came from writing reports about their vendor customers, or conducting research on behalf of these vendors. 

When I worked at these firms, two things really bugged me.  First, these firms carried a lot of unnecessary overhead -- particularly in sales, general and administrative (SG&A) positions.  And accordingly, they had to charge premium prices for their "research and analysis" services.  Second, because these firms had a lot of mouths to feed, they needed to have a lot of vendors supporting them.  And, as a result, these firms couldn't risk producing negative reports on their vendor customers because they might lose that vendor's sponsorship!

Clabby Analytics does receive some of its revenues from the vendor community, generally through the sale of reprint rights to some of our reports.  But, for the past 13 years, I have operated a consulting practice in the Middle East in cooperation with Datamatix (a Dubai, U.A.E.-based event organizing firm).  In Dubai, I run technology seminars, teach, and produce regional research reports based upon quantitative and qualitative data gathered throughout the region.  These endeavors enable me to meet all of my financial obligations on an annual basis. 

What this means is that I am not under the same sort of pressure many of my fellow research analysts are back in the States -- I've got a solid revenue stream elsewhere and I don't have to worry about pleasing a wide number of vendors in order to ensure my firm's revenue stream.  So, unlike many of my fellow research analysts back in the U.S., I am free to express my pure, unadulterated opinion without fear of the impact vendor-retaliation might have on my business.  This situation gives me a huge advantage over the large IT research and analysis firms.  I can write whatever I want without fear of reprisals from my vendor customers, and without fear of lost revenue.

This situation also puts me in a position where I can challenge the research of other analyst firms -- and I love doing that.  Last year I challenged IDC's Itanium Solutions Alliance white paper that claimed Intel's Itanium was superior in many respects to IBM's POWER and Sun's UltraSPARC architectures.  I also challenged the perception of Oracle's 10g as a "grid architecture" (its not, its a RAC cluster environment).  And I also challenged a Gartner report on the mainframe skills crisis. 

This year I'm also planning to challenge information being supplied by certain IT vendors.  Soon you will see me directly challenge a vendor (HP) and its "fact-based" mainframe replacement advice.  I've also already challenged VMware -- stating six reasons why I believe Microsoft's Hyper-V will overtake VMware in the not-so-distant future. 

So, come visit my site on a regular basis.  What you'll find is a lot of provocative counter opinion; several research advisories (that provide best practice information for deploying various technologies based upon real world customer interviews as well as trends analysis); and various white papers on technologies that I find interesting.  And don't be a stranger, if you want to talk to me, you can reach me at JClabby1@AOL.com.


Come Visit,
Have Fun,
Enjoy,
Best,
JC