Forrester’s NonStop Fluff Makes One Question Their Research

ByPrimary Researcher

Executive Summary

  • Forrester publishes some highly fluffy material designed to attract customers.
  • We review some of this fluff and question what it means for how Forrester performs research.

Video Introduction: Forrester’s NonStop Fluff Makes One Question Their Research

Text Introduction (Skip if You Watched the Video)

We found Forrester’s website both beautiful in its design but entirely lacking in content. What is curious is that Forrester is one of the most prominent IT analysts. Yet so much of what Forrester provides as analytical services is ethereal and seems to have been designed by strategy consultants. Most of this has to do with predicting a touchy feely technology future, that Forrester’s previous history of predictions has no history of coming true. Join us as we review some of the messaging presented by Forrester on their website.

Our References for This Article

If you want to see our references for this article and other related Brightwork articles, see this link.

Notice of Lack of Financial Bias: You are reading one of the only independent sources on Gartner. If you look at the information software vendors or consulting firms provide about Gartner, it is exclusively about using Gartner to help them sell software or consulting services. None of these sources care that Gartner is a faux research entity that makes up its findings and has massive financial conflicts. The IT industry is generally petrified of Gartner and only publishes complementary information about them. The article below is very different.

  • First, it is published by a research entity, not an unreliable software vendor or consulting firm that has no idea what research is. 
  • Second, no one paid for this article to be written, and it is not pretending to inform you while being rigged to sell you software or consulting services as a vendor or consulting firm that shares their ranking in some Gartner report. Unlike nearly every other article you will find from Google on this topic, it has had no input from any company's marketing or sales department. 

Forrester on IoT

Forrester has the following explanation of IoT. As we have stated, we find the IoT category extremely overrated and overhyped. Let us see what Forrester has to say on the topic.

First, this is a beautiful image. Kudos to Forrester’s art department, but the text is a bit concerning. 

“So while the B2C incarnations of IoT are still trying to find their footing, B2B applications of the technology are set to take off in 2019. The business case is too obvious and positive. B2B IoT will take a play from the mobile rollouts in 2000 that went beyond the buzz of what was possible, focusing on field assets, distributed management, and remote command and control. In that same way, B2B IoT will focus on driving efficiencies, connecting the enterprise, expanding the edge, and, in some cases, providing personalized customer experiences.”

There are some compelling use cases for IoT. Farming is one, and warehousing is another. However, by in large, it is a much-overhyped category of software, but not to Forrester! Forrester seems to wax philosophically around any technology, denying little and embracing — well, just about anything.

This analyst wants to call out the Qualtrics acquisition by SAP as ridiculous, as we did in the article Does SAP’s Acquisition of Qualtrics Make Any Sense?

However, she can’t. Remember, SAP is a big customer, and Forrester writes sponsored research like the item we critiqued in the article How Accurate Was The Forrester TCO Study?

Therefore they have to hedge.


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Conclusion

Is this really what executives want? It seems to have a very high fluff composition. Most of Forrester’s material comes across as if liberal art majors wrote it, and it appears that the Forrester resources have not themselves worked in technology.

The Problem: Thinking that Forrester is Focused on Accurate Research Conclusions

Every one of the Forrester studies that we review is rigged. Forrester is in the business of taking money from vendors and publishing whatever that vendor wants. Forrester both covers topics they don’t understand and have massive financial conflicts of interest.

References

http://images.email.forrester.com/Web/Forrester/%7B62b0c555-cddd-4bf0-bb3b-09161369b65f%7D_Forrester-Predictions-2019.pdf