Analysts are whores, vendors are pimps, does that make customers the Johns?

Lots of buzz yesterday around the fact that both Amrit Williams of Gartner and Richard Stiennon of IT-Harvest both announced they were going over to the "dark side" to work for vendors.  Amrit over at Big Fix (look for Amrit to appear on next weeks podcast as our special guest) and Richard at Fortinet (Richard anytime you would like to appear, you have an open invite).  This then prompted Thomas over at Matasano to post on whether or not all analysts are marketing execs in training.  This set off an orgy (do you guys see a theme building here) of comments from some of our esteemed security analysts/bloggers (Rothman, Mogull, Stiennon, Amrit). All of them essentially defended their positions by starting off that most analysts who "make it in this business" are too ethical to ever use any information they receive against another vendor (or if they do, it would be obsolete in 3 months anyway).  I actually agree with the realpolitik view that any info they have is obsolete in 3 months, so who cares. 

Both Rothman and Hoff, then posted follow ups with their own take on this issue. Of course I think they also have their own objectivity issues here.  Hoff is taking a preemptive first shot at Richard who went to his arch enemy Fortinet (nice post btw Chris) and Rothman who frankly may feel a little left out of the party (don't worry Mike, we still love ya, if you won't take a VP of marketing role, how about CMO?).  Mike Rothman actually makes a good point, what do these analysts have to aspire too?  They are people who have families to feed and bills to pay.  They are entitled to earn whatever the market will bear for their talents.  So if it is the slimy, sleazy vendors who are willing to pay them, what is an analyst to do.

Now from the vendors point of view, why would you not want to hire an Amrit or Richard or for that matter Rothman or Mogull to help out in the company?  I don't buy Rothman's point that analysts really don't add a lot of value on their own.  I think in the case of Amrit and Richard, these are both guys with long histories of providing value.  So I don't blame the vendors (hey no surprise there, after all I have my own bias as well don't I).

So who is to blame here?  Easy it is the end user customer of course!  If they would not treat the analysts as demi-gods, making us vendors kowtow to them, no one would give a hoot that Amrit went to Big Fix.  If customers did not look at magic quadrants as if they were taken directly from the Bible, would we care if Richard said IDS is dead and then went to a UTM vendor?  Of course I only half jest here.  In the words of Hyman Roth in the Godfather, Part II, "this is the business we have chosen".  We have all been on this boat before, we know how the game is played.  Customers listen to analysts because they are analysts.  Vendors seek to influence analysts to help them sell to customers.  Hell, one of the reasons I blog is to influence the influencers. So lets not all get all righteous now.  Analyst is not the oldest profession in the world, but giving advice is a pretty old trick (no pun intended). They follow the same rules of capitalism and human nature as the rest of us. It is only our expectations which I think are tweaked when we see them slide from one side of the table to the other.

Some one wiser than I once told me, if you don't expect anything from anyone, you will never be disappointed.  When it comes to dealing with analysts, vendors and such, buyer beware and don't have unreasonable expectations and you will not be surprised or upset by what happens.