Garnter Sued for $132 Million for Saying Mean Things

OK, this is just nutty...

A tiny Silicon Valley software vendor is taking on mighty Gartner, one of the technology industry's largest and most influential market research and consulting companies. The battle is playing out in a San Jose federal courtroom, where ZL Technologies is asking for $132 million in damages (plus even more in a punitive judgment), saying the research outfit damaged its prospects by ranking it in the bottom segment of its closely watched Magic Quadrant report. The MQ divides technology providers into different classes, with the bottom segment essentially forming a "do not buy" recommendation.

Blogger reactions are varied... but I agree that this is a pretty silly lawsuit.

ZL Technologies makes an email archiving product, and Gartner is not impressed with it... so in their opinion they call it a "niche" market player. Since in the US we have a little thing called the first amendment, this suit should be just thrown out. Unless Gartner is guilty of some kind of fraud... but I'd doubt it. They're too big of a firm to take that risk.

Besides... calling a product "niche" is hardly an insult. Stellent was once "niche", then "visionary," and after many many years it made it to "leader". "Niche" hardly means "do not buy," it simply means that the product might not be suitable for some industries, or some uses. In order to be a "leader", you need an innovative product with a good strategy, and a large enough organization to ensure the product will be around for a while (and not gobbled up and shut down by Open Text). Even if you have the best technology in the world, if you don't have a future vision, and the ability to grow your business, you're going to be called "niche."

I disagree with Gartner frequently -- mainly because they focus a bit too much on the "ability to execute" angle, and they do tend to ignore open source a lot... but this lawsuit is just ridiculous.