"Why do governments and big companies NEED help making IT [Information Technology] decisions? Don't most companies hire IT professionals to make those decisions in the first place? Do they really need to spend more than $2 billion per year between these consulting companies just to make better IT decisions?
The truth is that there is no IT "profession." Most of what IT managers know about IT they learn from vendors, consultants, and folks like Gartner. Because they feel isolated, and because the IT vendor/consultant/media system encourages them to worry about such things, IT managers tend to feel they must have their important decisions validated and Gartner is the most popular place to find validation. Yes they wield a lot of power, but it is often the power of discovering the obvious.
It's all about churn. If customers aren't buying stuff they won't worry about buying decisions, so they are always encouraged to buy. If customers don't change their IT infrastructure (or change it too slowly) they might become confident in their own ability to make the right choices, which would threaten the consultant relationship.
How often do these consultants tell their customers that everything is fine and no action is required? Almost never."