IT Analysts in Price War?

The Burton Group, an IT analyst firm, is trying to steal court customers away from competing firms, such as Gartner Group and Forrester Research, with a low-price offer. From the Burton "Drop a Seat" website:

For a limited time, Burton Group is offering new, first-time clients unlimited, enterprise-wide access to one of our services for the price of a single seat from another IT research provider.

It's relatively unusual to see services firms offer such a blatant price promotion. But hey, why not.

It wouldn't be right for me to avoid mentioning that some people have real disdain for industry analysts. For example, here's a pithy quote from the Catching Flack blog:

Analyst firms that charge vendors for relationships cannot truly objectively comment on the industry. Period. They spend most of their time on the phone with their paying clients (and are the most familiar with their products). They give the lion’s share of their coverage to paying clients. The whole structure of the system is to reward people that pay them and either overlook or outright punish folks that do not.

[via Tekrati]