Service Desk's Battle for Market Share

FrontRange laid claim to the leader position based on a recent Gartner report, "Market Share: Enterprise Management Worldwide, 2004." It seems the report, which was published as an Excel document, included a faulty pivot table. FrontRange simply pivoted the Excel numbers to exclude mainframe market dollars--it doesn't have mainframe products--and gave itself the top position. BMC cried foul. Gartner quickly locked the pivot table and tried to do the same to FrontRange's marketing mouths.

After the skirmish, FrontRange relinquished the No. 1 banner but still says the numbers in the initial Gartner report support its claims of supremacy. BMC still says its Remedy products are without peer, and goodness knows what position HP-Peregrine will take. We may never know the exact market numbers--but it's clear the IT service desk market isn't a sleepy backwater anymore.