Those in the industry know that there is a dance that goes on between vendors who crave analyst endorsement, and analyst firms who portray vendor independence to end-user firms while happily trousering large fees from the vendors that actually constitute most of their income. The Cranky PM has written entertainingly on this corrupt relationship before, but usually the analyst firm at least makes a pretence of playing hard to get. However a recent puff piece for Informatica by Ventana analyst David Stodder raises the bar on sycophantic behaviour by analysts towards vendors who have taken out paid contracts with them. David gushes about Informatica’s support for MDM and how all right-minded “companies starting out with MDM look at what Informatica has to offer”. How about an alternative view:

“Informatica does not make a MDM application”

Strong stuff. What kind of vicious competitive slur can this be? Perhaps it is from a jealous competitor, or maybe some cynical spurned journalist or analyst that Informatica was less generous towards with its cheque book? Er, no, the source of this counter-statement is actually on the official Informatica web site. Last time I looked, having an ETL tool and a purchased data quality product, however good, does not equate to an MDM application, and all credit to Informatica for not pretending otherwise.

What amused me was this piece was entitled “analyst insight”. Yep, dazzling insight there all right.
(with apologies to Elizabeth Barret Browning).