For readers that might have missed it last week, I just wanted to highlight the very interesting conversation going on in regards to Naumi’s post Who needs analyst firms anyways? There have been about 20 comments so far, and it’s one of those cases where a great post has been made even better by the thoughtful insights from the community. Here’s a few quotes from the post to show you what drew people in – and encourage you to go and have your say on the issue as well:

Officially, IT analyst firms are a $2.5 billion dollar business, of which about $1 billion belongs to the industry behemoth Gartner. As impressive as this number might seem, it represents only a fraction of the total IT analysis actually being traded. There is a social media undercurrent running just below the surface of the IT analysis industry—call it “IT Analysis 2.0” or “Open Source Analysis,”—where insightful content is not bought and sold, but rather offered up for free…

Like MySpace and YouTube in the entertainment industry, the social media undercurrent in the IT analysis industry is threatening to build up to tsunami proportions.

… my point is that online research reports and white papers – like a great deal of other digital content – are becoming commoditized. Open source analyst firms understand this and are disrupting the market by offering basic content for free and shifting revenue models to value-added services.