HP slippage in outsourcing highlights research controversy

As just noted in my posting about Gartner's newly released data, HP has slipped a notch in terms of its share of the IT services market. According to the news story, HP is disputing Gartner's findings. This isn't the first time that research numbers have turned into a controversy. In a recent story I wrote about the blade server market, the two blade leaders IBM and HP were at odds over whose research -- Gartner's or IDC's -- more accurately reflected their shares of the blade market. Whereas Gartner puts HP in the lead, IDC has IBM in first place. In a dig against Gartner, Tim Dougherty, director of IBM's Bladecenter product line had this to say "My take on it is that this was Gartner's first cut at [measuring] the blade market as a separate entity and they got it wrong. If you look at the IDC view, they have a better sense of what's going on because they've been doing it for two years."