Should Brightwork Research and Analysis Sell Out to SAP?

Table of Contents: Select a Link to be Taken to That Section

Executive Summary

It has been proposed that SAP should not be critiqued and that all information about SAP should come from SAP funded sources.
We ask the question if readers prefer that we sell out to SAP.

Introduction

Our last article on HANA titled SAP’s Layoffs, and a Brightwork Warning on HANA created quite a tizzy in the SAP community. With many SAP resources preferring if it has not been written. You will learn how the IT analytics game really works as we discuss some of the input we received and then open the question of selling out to SAP to a poll that readers can voice their views.

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: We have no financial ties to SAP or any other entity mentioned in this article.

This is published by a research entity, not some lowbrow entity that is part of the SAP ecosystem.
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. 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. As you are reading this article, consider how rare this is. The vast majority of information on the Internet on SAP is provided by SAP, which is filled with false claims and sleazy consulting companies and SAP consultants who will tell any lie for personal benefit. Furthermore, SAP pays off all IT analysts -- who have the same concern for accuracy as SAP. Not one of these entities will disclose their pro-SAP financial bias to their readers.

The Consulting, IT Media, and Analyst Landscape

In terms of information on SAP providers, nearly all entities that provide information on SAP receive financial benefits from SAP. In the consulting sphere, this is well known and controls the data or “advice” offered to customers. Through advertisement and paid placement controls, the vast majority of entities in the IT media space, as we covered in How to Best Understand Control of the SAP on IT Media.

In the IT analyst space, both Gartner and Forrester and directly paid by SAP, and most of the other analysts are also paid by SAP. Others both paid and offered up lucrative advisement contracts to the large SAP customer base. This has produced typically forecastable compliant content. Perhaps the primary reason SAP can distribute so much false information about their products to the market.

The best way to make money in the SAP market is to align with SAP and deceive your readers or customers.

The Problem with Brightwork Research & Analysis

Our primary problem is that we don’t take income from vendors, including SAP, and the second problem is we know SAP quite well, having worked in SAP for decades and producing the most research on SAP. The final problem is that we follow a research approach that means we have to follow the evidence down to its conclusion without worrying about who we contradict or whose feelings might be hurt. This puts us at odds with nearly all of the information providers in the space. And it is why we are not on the approved SAP list of analyst firms that IT media can contact, as we covered in How to Become an Approved Analyst for SAP?

Becoming a passive repeater is profitable. It’s how most of the information providing entities in SAP make their money.

Becoming SAP’s Passive Repeater

The best way for Brightwork Research & Analysis to make money is to solicit SAP for funding and become a repeater for their marketing department. This would not only bring in money (we think we have not reached out to SAP to see what we could get from them, but we do know they pay other information providers in the space), but it would also reduce our work effort. As can be seen from other analysts and media entities that are also paid by SAP and reviewing the SAP consulting company websites, it means being able to drop almost all thought altogether. All we need to do is republish SAP’s material on our site — so SAP provides the content!

We covered how little work ASUG seems to do in writing articles about SAP in the article How ASUG Lost its Way and Sold Out to SAP.

The trick is like ASUG, and Forrester and Gartner will pretend that the funding by SAP has nothing to do with our SAP marketing-driven content. As has Gartner, we can even set up a fake ombudsman, as we covered in What is the Difference Between the Gartner Ombudsman and Disclosure.

The benefits should be obvious to anyone.

100% Control Over Information Provided Entities

The message we are getting from many sources that are financially connected to SAP is that there should not be any information providers unless that source is financially connected to SAP. And this is also the best way to monetize the research effort that goes into our content (in addition to reducing the research effort considerably.)

Your Chance to Tell Us Your View

So this is where we need the advice of readers as to what to do. Please fill out the poll, which can let us know what you think we should do!