Ignoring the magic quadrant baloney and market growth predictions, Gartner and other analyst firms conduct some useful research based on large industry surveys on how companies and large organizations regard emerging technologies, or how they are planning to pilot or deploy new technology. This is especially true of in-house series conducted on a quarterly or annual basis, less so for vendor-funded research.

The data may pour cold water on whatever Big Trend is supposedly rising to the fore, or call out important caveats that vendors would rather not address.

Agree. If you get past the baloney, the typical Gartner analyst is speaking with 50-100 CTOs per month. This is incredibly useful, as it provides a great general understanding of what companies are implementing, what is working, what is failing, what is no longer important, what is important. This allows them to become true mavens on their specific vertical or sub-vertical, sharing best practice. So this is definitely valuable, depending on how cutting-edge you happen to be.

do you think, in so doing, they discover anything not obvious to an audience like HN which posts and shares insights themselves?