Greetings and best wishes.

This is my first blog so please be gentle with me.

While Googling to see whether anyone had used the same title for their blog as I intended, a random search uncovered this article by Tom Foremski. It asked ‘Are industry analysts losing ground in the new media world?’

The article raised some valid points. Are analysts too scared to blog? Do they not appreciate the [perceived] value? Do analysts risk eroding their influence because they do not engage in blogging?

Reasonable questions—that I will explore in a moment.

But, first, as an aside, here's another question: what is influence anyway? This is a topic Hydrasight has begun exploring, using quantitative research, in the Asia Pac market. The results have been surprising. Perhaps I'll share some of them with you in future posts.

Now, back to the subject (of blogs and analysts). Why? Because it explains why I'm conducting this experiment.

When I first tossed around the idea (of a blog) with fellow Hydrasight founder John Brand—industry sage, respected analyst, brilliant mind—he made some telling comments. Namely:

• Blogging is simply an ego/relationship-based publishing metaphor; and
• Why would anyone want to come to our blog, as opposed to the people who are doing it full time and making a living from it? (ie, focused on generating advertising revenue).

I tend to agree-from the point of view of the traditional IT industry analyst. In other words, the writing in blogs often tends to be ego-driven, lazy, and unbalanced (i.e., not subject to the rigour of peer-reviewed research and analysis). I therefore do not believe blogs will displace formal analyst research (or practices). We've also stated that, in general, we believe blogging will be short-lived (in a Hydrabit we published over a year ago).

There. I've laid my cards on the table. Call me old school.

It only leaves one question then. Why am I starting a blog? Here's the answers:

1. It's a quick (and dirty) way to disseminate commentary on major news items;
2. It's a vehicle to make announcements about Hydrasight activity (e.g., surveys, new hires, research partnerships);
3. Because Hydrasight only writes research focused on the IT organisation, this blog is an alternate means to distribute the occasional non- research-publishable items (e.g., how to work with analysts better, opinions on Asia Pac market, things that really annoy me in my job and need to be vented).

Finally, and the most important reason why I'm doing this, as an analyst I'm always willing explore alternate points of view—and to be proved wrong.