Gartner's Smoking Crack Again

As I have mentioned many times before, I monitor Google for a number of things using their Alerts service. One of my all-time favorites is "Gartner says" because our middle management types go ga-ga over anything Gartner has to say. To paraphrase their attitude:

"Gartner said it. I believe it. That settles it."

Lately Gartner's pronouncements have been dull. Predictions about market situations, etc. Not really our (my company's) niche. And I prefer to catch their generalizations.

And their contradictions! Here's the latest from their Left Hand Doesn't Know What the Right Hand is Doing Department:

• Gartner says Webmail cuts costs for SMEs
  
• Gartner: Seven cloud-computing security risks

The first article extolls the virtues of cloud computing (latest biznizz buzzword for "teh Internets") for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). Here's a 'cerpt:

Businesses with less than 1000 staff should consider replacing in-house e-mail servers with webmail to reduce the cost of providing e-mail for end users, analyst firm Gartner has advised.

Matthew Cain, research vice-president at Gartner, said companies with fewer than 1,000 seats would gain significantly from the webmail approach.

These free consumer-based services use the Internet "cloud" to host users' InBoxes, contact address books and calendars.

They usually provide gigabytes of online storage for InBoxes and usually allow users to send and receive e-mail via Outlook or another e-mail client using the POP (post office protocol) or from a simple web browser user interface.

You get the picture: Cloud Computing Good!

Then, in the next article they pull a flip-flop:

Cloud computing has “unique attributes that require risk assessment in areas such as data integrity, recovery and privacy, and an evaluation of legal issues in areas such as e-discovery, regulatory compliance and auditing,” Gartner says.

Mmmmm... okay... Cloud Computing BAD!

I think Gartner is telling the Little Guy to leave them alone and go play on the Internet. That's really not their market anyway. In my opinion, that's a real nutty thing to say. You can't depend on someone else to keep your data safe. You are asking for trouble. It's extremely irresponsible for Gartner to recommend that, but hey! they're Gartner, they can say anything!

Luckily, judging from the Google Alerts, the "Seven Deadly Sins" article is getting much more traffic. Let's hope the Little Guys see that article first.