When it comes to keeping up with the latest IT industry trends, the good, the bad, the things to keep an eye on, how do we even begin to get started when the industry is so large and diverse?

There are, however, lots of places we can go to find different opinions and views, vendor events, blogs, briefings or even Podcasts. One other avenue open to us are analysts, these are organisations that research the industry, the companies who are a part of it and the trends and challenges users of technology have and put them into useful analysis to help inform us when it comes to making decisions about future technology partners.

Recently major analyst firm, Gartner, published one of their Magic Quadrant reports, this one focussed on the storage industry. As always these reports reflect really well on some and not always so well for others.

I was discussing this recently with a friend of mine from storage vendor NetApp, who performed particularly well in this report, we had an interesting discussion on what these reports mean, how you could use them as part of your IT strategy planning and how they help as part of a selection process, it was such an interesting chat, I thought it would make a great podcast.

So, this week, I’m joined by Greg Knieriemen, Chief Technologist at NetApp as we replay our discussion for the benefit of the Tech Interviews audience. Greg is a well known voice in the industry having spent 6 years at Hitachi Data Systems before joining NetApp, before that he also had a long career in the IT channel. Greg is also a well know industry “watcher” in his own right and was long time host of the excellent “Speaking in Tech Podcast” as well as the host of a new show “Go your own way”. Greg always has great insight to share and is no different this week;

On the show we discuss;

What analysts do

Types of analysts and their differing value

Changing view of analysts from skepticism to appreciation

The importance of an independent voice for the enterprise

Gartner’s primary storage magic quadrant report

The maturity of flash storage

Storage isn’t just about disks

Why NetApp did well in the report

Where they didn’t

Moving beyond speeds and feeds

Data focussed strategy not platform focussed

I always enjoying chatting with Greg, he has a long and varied experience in the IT sector and a great way of sharing that information. Analyst reports clearly have a place in the technology industry, although they should not be treated as the definitive source for your technology decisions, they certainly offer a lot of value and provide a good basis for those in IT to help the decision making process.

If you would like to read the Gartner report we discussed during the show you can download that from NetApp here Gartner Magic Quadrant Report. You can also find more NetApp thoughts on the report over at blog.netapp.com.

And if you want to hear more from Greg you can follow him on twitter @Knieriemen and on his new podcast which he co-hosts with another friend of the show Phoebe Goh, you’ll find that here.

Until next time, thanks for listening.