Small businesses are not the target clients of Gartner, Forrester, IDC, etc

Carter Lusher — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 21:13:35 GMT

The reason why the larger analyst firms do not provide much coverage of small business tech issues is because that is not their target market. The majority of Gartner's and Forrester's corporate customers are at large enterprise, US$1 billion in revenue or greater.

The largest firms have tried on a number of occasions since the early 1990's to develop products and go-to-market tactics that would work in the small business market and they all failed. As a consequence, Gartner etc focus on large enterprises.

BTW, it is not true for Forrester and Gartner that "... vendors who commission the reports...". Both firms have had policies since the 2002-03 timeframe that prohibit whitepaper-for--hire business. All the research they publish is done uncommissioned for their syndicated research. That said, both Gartner and Forrester harvest significant revenues from vendors licensing reprints of published research. For example, almost every Gartner Magic Quadrant and Forrester Wave can be found on some vendor' website. However, this is done after publication.

There are plenty of analyst firms that do accept commisioned research engagements, but not Forrester and Gartner.

Carter Lusher, Strategist

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Small businesses are not the target clients of Gartner, Forrester, IDC, etc