I am sure most of you saw Ed' Brill's reaction to the Gartner report about migrating off Lotus Notes, but you may not have seen Gartner's Tom Austin guy firing back::

The money shot in the Austin's blog is "I’ve been where Ed is today. I used to work for a vendor in this very space, among others, Digital Equipment. I know what someone in Ed’s position is supposed to do." What he's saying is he used to be a product evangelist for a vendor that's seen by some to have one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel (DEC was acquired by Compaq in 1998).

In my opinion, where the Austin loses his credibility is when he says " the contents were written by hundreds of Gartner clients, filtered through several key Gartner analysts and vetted by a large number of analysts and managers at Gartner" as if it has somehow not been tainted by the greasy hands of a vendor! "Filtered through several key Gartner analysts?!?!? Why not just say "the Kool-Aid makers at Gartner took out all the content that would make you less likely to hire Gartner to do your Notes migration...or not"

If Gartner wants to take shots at Ed Brill for toeing a party line, that's fine - but to imply that Gartner has no agenda is simply not credible.