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Rich August 14, 2008 2 Comments

There’s been a bit of debate on the blogs recently over the role of analysts, and how they pay their bills. It started with the Hoff, and Alan Shimel followed up (no link right now due to Alan’s blog issues). I know Chris wasn’t calling me out on this one (because he told me), but I do recognize I put a lot of content out there that people trust to help make decisions, and it’s only fair they know of any potential conflicts of interest I might have. I’m not going to get into a big debate over the role of analysts in the IT industry. I think the good ones offer tremendous value, but I’m clearly biased. Where I’m not biased is in my positions. No matter who pays the bills, I recognize that most of my value in the security world is my objectivity. Everything I write is for the end user, even if a piece is sponsored by vendor or written internally for an investor. As soon as I forget that, my career is over. It’s one thing for me to claim that, and another for you to believe it. I don’t assume you’ll take me at my word, and that’s why I throw everything out here on the blog and leave it for public comment. If you think I’m biased, call me on it. I don’t think I’ve ever deleted a a comment, other than spam and personal insults. Insulting argument is okay, but I decline to host pointless insults – there are lots of other places for that, and this is my (our) soapbox – you can set up your own website or find another board if you just want to flame online; there’s no shortage of venues. We also encourage vendors to comment, as long as they identify themselves clearly if it’s on something related to their offerings. It’s also only fair you know who pays my bills, and my policies on papers and webcasts. Right now about 85% of our income is from vendors, with the remaining 15% split between investment clients, end users, and media companies (magazines/conferences). We’re expensive for consultants, and don’t typically engage in long-term projects, which cuts out a lot of paid end user business, although we do a ton of (short) free calls, emails, and meetings when I’m traveling. As for papers and webcasts, the rules are we (Adrian and myself) will work with a vendor on a topic, but they have no input on the content. To make this work we give them detailed outlines of what they can expect before we write it, and all contracts are written so that if they don’t like the content, we go our separate ways and we won’t charge them. In all cases we (Securosis) own the content and only license it to the vendors for (usually) a year. And yes, I’ve walked away from deals, although we haven’t had one fall apart after the draft was written, since we prefer to work out any conflicts before we start. Also, all the content appears first on the blog for public input- this is the best way we can think of to be transparent. So who pays the bills? I can’t talk about our strategy clients, but we’ve done public work (papers/webcasts/speaking) with all of the following vendors (I’m assuming you don’t care about the media companies): Core Security Guardium Imperva Mozilla Oracle Powertech RSA Secu o Sentrigo Symantec Tizor Vericept Websense Winmagic Workshare There aren’t any surprises here- I’ve announced all those papers, webcasts, and such here on the blog already, along with who the sponsor was. No, I can’t talk about all our clients, but if they aren’t on that list, they’ve never sponsored any content. Another thing we do to balance objectivity is work with competitors- we won’t engage in contracts that exclude us from working with competitors. This was all already public, so I’m not giving away any big secrets. Also, don’t take this as a “look how great we are!” post; we’re doing this for transparency, not marketing. We’ve also worked with SANS, CMP Media, TechTarget, some large financials (doesn’t everyone?), and a few investment types. That doesn’t count the end users we don’t charge. That’s it. If you think we’re biased, call us on it and we won’t delete the comment. Our goal is to be as open as possible so you know where the information you’re reading comes from. Do we push some technologies? Yep, because we think they can help. We’ve definitely turned away work for things we don’t believe in. Share:

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