I received a really nice email (if you want to call it that) from Gar-ner on Friday. If you are asking who is Gar-ner, well it’s this company that put companies in a square divided into four sections. I received an email asking me to take down my blogs that contained this companies name by them telling the following:
“Per our Copyright and Quote Policy, available at the link below and at any time from Gartner's home page, other companies may only externally quote, mention, reference or display the Gartner name or Gartner research after first obtaining approval in writing, in advance, from my department. In violation of this restriction, your organization has been using Gartner’s name and research as shown in your blog entry at this link”.
Now I am an educated man and I have read the Bill of Rights four times this morning, I cannot find anything in there where this company can tell me I cannot mention their companies name in news article. I think it is called freedom of the press. Do they really think that every press agency is going to call them to ask if they can use the company name? A CMO told me this morning arrogance is bliss and Ga-ner is a lost soul.
Now I am going to say that I did not pull any information from the Gar-ner web site, nor did I ask them for any information. The information that I used for my WAN acceleration blogs was from vendors who sent me the information. They sent me the information since they are a vendor and wanted to make sure I was aware of where they were now in the square. Also updated that were made to these after they came out. It was not Cisco or Riverbed who sent me any of the information, hard to believe but it is true.
So all of the information I posted and used was sent to me by vendors to make sure I knew the news. But Gar-ner does not see it that way; I still have no idea why. But what I did was to delete all blogs that have this company name in it. By deleting them I am telling them that they mean nothing to me anymore, I will no longer use their name or even care about the square they use. I know some vendors called me on Friday and Saturday to talk to me about the deleted post.
They all agreed with me and said it was absorbed to believe that Gar-ner would say you cannot use the company name. Many think it was vendor related and some vendors pushed them to do this as the blogs put some companies in a bad light with their product. I don’t know about that but I agree with the vendor who called me, Gar-ner has gone really too far with censorship.
Gar-ner also sent this to me:
“Gartner’s published research is proprietary intellectual property of Gartner, Inc., and is protected by the copyright laws of the United States and other countries. Your company's mention of our research in your material does not comply with our Copyright and Quote Policy (available at the link below) and so this is an infringement of our copyrights. I ask that you take immediate and effective steps to remove this blog posting and also any other unauthorized mention of Gartner’s research in any other venue which you control. “
My last question will be, (just as an example) are they going to ask at every blog that mentions the Gar-ner name be taken down from the Cisco Blog web site? I don’t think they all received permission for each blog entry and asked for it to be cleared by Gar-ner. This is not to mention all of the other sites around the world who use the company name.
To be clear to all of my readers, we will not use, publish or mention the Gar-ner name or any reports in the future. We will come up with our own when it comes to networking, voices, video and other areas. I am sure we can do a better job any way.
What do you think of this Censorship issue and just using a company name? Imagine if Cisco said that every time you wanted to use the company name you had to get permission just to you use it.
Gar-ner gets a big thumb down and just lost an avenue to further its news. I wonder if Ga-ner can say delete, delete, delete, delete and oh did I say delete?
Larry Chaffin Ph.D is the Chief Executive Officer/Chairman and founder of Pluto Networks, a Consulting and VAR partner specializing in WAN Acceleration, VoIP, WLAN, Telepresence and Security and a Riverbed reseller. Pluto Networks specializes in the needs of small, large and enterprise companies by always giving them a great ROI on the products they sell. Pluto Networks has a presence in 23 countries around the world enabling all of its consultants to be virtual. Larry was a Judge at Interop for the Best of Interop Awards for 2009 and is looking forward to the 2010 awards in Las Vegas.
Larry has also co-authored all of the books listed below:
Managing Cisco Secure Networks, Skype Me, Practical VOIP Security, Configuring Check Point NGX VPN-1/Firewall-1,Configuring Juniper Networks NetScreen & SSG Firewalls,Essential Computer Security: Everyone's Guide to Email, Internet, and Wireless Security, How to Cheat at Microsoft Vista Administration, Microsoft Vista for IT Security Professionals, Asterisk Hacking, 2008 VoIP and Video Conferencing, Infosecurity 2008 Threat Analysis and author of Building a VOIP Network with Nortel's MS5100, along with co-authoring/ghost writing eleven other technology books for VIOP, WLAN, security and optical technologies. Larry is currently working on a follow up to Building a VoIP network with Nortel's MCS 5100 Book as well as new books on Cisco Telepresence Networks, Practical VoIP case studies and WAN Acceleration with Riverbed.
Larry also has more than 29 vendor certifications and has been working on many others. Larry has been a principal architect around the world in 22 countries for many Fortune 100 companies designing VoIP, security, wireless and optical networks. He has expanded over time also to include application acceleration. Larry is working with worldwide company now out of Asia as a Special Assistant to the CEO and CIO as they go through organizational and network changes, helping them with strategic advice from his years or experience. Pluto Networks is a channel partner of Cisco, ProCurve, LifeSize, Riverbed, Call Copy, Fastsoft and Symantec.
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Typical Arrogance
It's a shame the F500 rely so much on unsubstantiated opinion posted by that company. I have a healthy respect for the companies that actually do - ya know - real research, instead of passing off opinion as research.
And yes, it's gone too far. Get over your collective selves, analysts. Your opinion is just the opinion of an outside observer - certainly not worth what you charge for it.
Weak Sauce Gartne r
Wow - this is just unbelievable. The arrogance being shown by Gartner is simply amazing.
Typical Gartner Behaviour
Arrogance indeed. They seem to think their views are above all other analysts and most of those analysts have never been part of successful product or vendors. This is also what happens to companies that dont have inherent value and rely of their documents for revenue.
Get a grip Gartner. If you did not have customers,products or expert bloggers, you would have no clients!
Change of heart
Wow, funny to read this. After reading some of the opinions here before I thought the four box reviews were next to godliness...
Our Bad
You’re right. We overstepped in our response to your blog post, and as the owner of the Gartner Copyright & Quote policy I apologize for that error. You were within your rights to share the information you shared on your blog.
We do have some pretty strict rules around external use of Gartner research by our clients, and we have them so that our research isn’t quoted out of context, as a weapon by one vendor against another, or as an implied endorsement of a vendor or product. Our published IP is the basis for virtually everything that Gartner offers, so we do want to make sure we protect it when warranted. But in this case it wasn’t warranted.
Please send email to me
Nancy,
While anyone can post on this blog, I have not received any emails or phone calls from Gar-ner. I have deleted all blogs and they will not be going back up. Gar-ner stepped over the line, tried to push the wrong person around and did not think I would write about it. If Gar-ner is really trying to say they are sorry they should do a press release.
Go away Nancy, we've seen Gartner's true colors
Yup, I have some strict rules too now:
The name "Gartner" now equals "mud" in my book.
Boycott Gartner, sorry Nancy to little too late
This should start a boycott on Gartner so that companies don’t rely on them so much and do research themselves. If my company did some research and testing rather than just buying the Gartner top picks, our network would be better. Let’s just say they are not always right.
With that said I am very happy Larry Chaffin stood up to Gartner and deleted all of the blogs, it really shows Gartner they are not all of that. They really tried to bully the wrong person and Larry called the bluff.
Some stupid analyst
You don't say who sent you the email, but you might point him/her to the actual policy at the website:
bolding didn't come through
Notice that the name restriction is for commercial use. I doubt very much that Gartner wants to restrict mention of their name in news articles.
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