"Gartner... for the average user"

An emal from a experienced technology professional sent to her network of IT colleagues. She asked only that her name not be used due to the governance requirements of her employer. 

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Hey guys (& ladies!),

I had the incredible experience of attending Oracle OpenWorld last week in San Francisco. It is the largest technology conference in our country right now.  I have returned with a zillion new ideas.  But I had a chance meeting with the CEO of a company called VendorRate and I want to pass that info along. Most of you have been part of my personal peer group for years and this is the exact type of information we have asked from one another.

VendorRate.com is “affordable business intelligence” where qualified and verified IT professionals rate the vendors they do business with. Then you can pull a variety of reports to help you with your decision-making. I can see this being useful when researching a new project. I can also see an incredible value when renegotiating support contracts or long-term agreements.

When I looked at the VendorRate.com reports, I thought it was sort of like Gartner products for the average user. I remember our early days with ASCII (the State User Group), and most of our meetings were centered around “Who do you use for ………..” That’s exactly what VendorRate.com is!

Clearly, I’m a fan. I got to see the inside of the product and was shown how they validate an IT Professional and also how they validate a rating. There will never be an instance where a vendor can pad the votes or skew the ratings.

So, VendorRate.com needs a couple of things.  One is simply to use the website.  The other is to rate your Vendors! There are more being added on a daily basis, so the value of the reports is improving every time I check them out. It is a very short, quick rating process.

I wish you could have seen the presentation I did.  I left that chance meeting thinking, why didn’t we think of that?  Give it a try and let me know what you think!

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Come give VendorRate a try at www.vendorrate.com.  And if you are a public sector employee, rate a vendor to receive a free one year subscription tothe On-Demand reporting mentioned above.