Re: Forrester: Ingres and MySQL Lead Open Source Databases

Greg Stark wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 8:21 PM, Josh Berkus<josh@agliodbs.com> wrote:
>> So in the case of analysts, it's a case of "can we influence this
>> analyst to produce a favorable report?  How much will it cost, and how
>> many people will it reach?"  Not an argument of "are analysts good or bad."

Perhaps also add the question "what's the most cost effective way
to influence the analyst?" as well.

> Well, how much would it cost? Can you outbid Oracle, Microsoft, and IBM?

ISTM there are exactly 2 ways once can effectively influence such
analysts to say that Postgres is better than the alternatives.

1. For ethical analysts, the most cost effective way - and practically
   the only way - is to produce a better product than the alternatives.
   The analyst's job is to research the alternatives and honestly
   describe them to their audience.   If we can quantify the cost
   to make postgres better than alternatives, that answer's the
   cost question Greg and Josh are discussing.

2. For less ethical analysts, the most cost effective way is probably
   to spend money on them - *and* do the legwork for getting favoriable
   data for the report.  I don't doubt that if someone wanted to
   buy a report from Forrester to address the question "can postgres
   scale to handle databases like skype's" and then gave them
   willing skype contacts as references, they could write a glowing
   report.   But does that really accomplish much?   It gets one nice
   report, but has a one time effect while any resources spend on #1
   has recurring effects until the competition catches up again.

I'm guessing that the most cost effective way to influence analysts
in the long run is to spend the resources making sure the product
is better than the competition.