Yphise: just how “independent” are you?

And one wonders why the “independent analyst industry” is currently under fire for questionable research practices and methodologies. I recently blogged about this issue in January.

A press release came through the other day with the following headline: “(vendor named here) Ranked Best (vendor industry solution here) in Hands-On Review by Independent Analyst Group.”

I was so intrigued I clicked on the Google link to read the copy.

Apparently “a leading European independent analyst group,” Yphise, conducted a hands-on review of said vendor’s technology. The problem and misleading nature of this press release is that neither the vendor nor the analyst firm define “hands on review” and general methodology of the review.

You see, in the technology industry, “hands on review” typically means the analyst held the mouse, so to speak, while battle testing the software in its labs, running real world user scenarios, etc. To my knowledge this was not the case.

But then again, no one should care about such an announcement, not the least of which enterprise IT buyers, when the analyst firm’s “head to head comparison” is based on a questionnaire, not actually using the product.

Question for Yphise – just how much did this vendor pay you to ensure its “best ranking?” Feel free to leave a comment below. And if you were, in fact, paid for this hands on review, how can you claim independence?

BTW – your website, Yphise.com, looks like it was built on GeoCities. You should probably fix that soon.