Consultants Take It in the Snoot: IDC Criticizes Itself and a Competitor
April 5, 2013
Have you ever been hammering a nail and smacked your finger. Imagine what it feels like to whack your nose. Ouch.
Navigate to to “Gartner and IDC predictions: Oops, Forget What We Said Last Time.” The main point of the write up it seems to me is that azure chip consulting firms just crank out predictions. When the spirit moves the azure chip crowd, new predictions are generated using fancy math, a dash of spreadsheet fever, and inputs from other azure chip consultants.
With new outputs, new predictions are possible. The predictions, if I read the IDC write up correctly, have little connection with previous predictions. Here’s what IDC said about itself:
IDC is no better: It predicted last month that total PC shipments in 2013 would fall 1.3 percent from 2012. Of course, before that, it predicted an increase of 2.8 percent. It too predicted that Windows Phone would be a major hit, based apparently solely on the fact it came from Microsoft.
What was the benchmark against which IDC’s work was measured? IDC points to the estimable Gartner Group which warranted several paragraphs of commentary. I won’t repeat the IDC summary of another firm’s predictions. Please, read them in a “real” news publication, not a free blog produced by a 70 year old in rural Kentucky.
But per my want I will set forth several observations:
First, for many years I worked at a couple of above average outfits very much into the prediction game. After moving to other tasks, I have watched the rise of the prediction industry. At Halliburton NUS, fancy math was needed to figure out which fuel rods should be moved. Moving nuclear fuel rods is a useful function but I know that most of my two or three readers are fully conversant with nuclear engineering’s use of statistical methods. At Booz, Allen & Hamilton in the days when the firm competed fiercely with McKinsey, Bain, and Boston Consulting, most of the technology group’s units relieved on a wide range of fancy math to perform tasks which most “real” journalists and “experts” have a comfortable familiarity. I won’t enumerate the methods to perform nuclear plume modeling, a topic which I am confident most “experts” discuss at lunch each day. Now every “expert” is a master of advanced math. How comforting it is to know that technical expertise is widely available to perform a range of data centric tasks. Obviously talk about skills shortages in math and related disciplines is wrong.
It is easy to make predictions using back of the envelope methods like Briggs’s Equations. Azure chip outfits can work these sequences in their head, whilst texting, and writing client reports I surmise.
Second, the notion that predictions exist without context is an interesting one. What the IDC criticism of azure chip consultancies suggests is that just about any old estimate is good enough to today’s busy, super sophisticated professional. However, is it possible that azure chip firms and their number crunchers are edging into the murky swamp of marketing. Creating a number and providing an insight based on that number is easy to do. Without critical thinking about a prediction, is it possible that fiction takes the place of fact? Just a question to consider. You may want to take a look at The Cheating culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead.
Third, are predictions part of the shift from doing work the way my grandfather did it to the thumb typing methods of today? My view is that the shift to knowledge work allows almost everyone hang out the “expert” shingle. Take me. I studied medieval poetry in Latin and bumbled into computing by accident. The journey from that first programming job in 1963 to the present has been a long, arduous journey. Is it possible today that individuals better suited to running a lathe or making cookies find themselves working at azure chip consulting firms cranking out predictions?
Click the image to learn about expert marketing. It is easy to create a video to communicate one’s capabilities.
Fourth, the information technology world is in flux. Those running technology units are not sure what to do. For guidance, these folks want to have back up, data, and case studies. The information flows from azure chip consultants and “experts”. What happens if the inputs are not on point? Perhaps the niggling glitches like security issues, flawed software, ever present cost overruns, and stuff that just doesn’t work as advertised provide some indication? Glitches are standard operating procedures in many “smart” systems. What if the experts’ advice is not accurate? Won’t problems escalate and cascade? Are the present economic challenges attributable to some degree to expert inputs which were incorrect? Interesting question in my opinion.
The IDC critique of itself and Gartner Group seems like an isolated and infrequent incident. But even the search engine optimization crowd. Now this group has almost as many unemployed “real” journalists and failed middle school teachers as the azure chip consulting industry, published “Big Data—Has It Blinded Us with Science?” When folks who intentionally distort the results of an “objective” search engine, maybe there is something troubling even today’s always-on, always-busy, always-selling crowd. Is marketing more important than anything except generating revenue?
I wonder how that self inflicted poke to the nose feels. At my age, my most forceful blow is as gentle as a summer breeze.
Stephen E Arnold, April 5, 2013
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