Forrester CEO George Colony listed them last week:

• Intel's chips are primarily sold inside desktop and notebook PCs. IT spending is now spread out elsewhere, so that Intel is no longer one component of a Windows/Intel monopoly.
• Virtualization software, which runs many server environments simultaneously on one chip, has reduced the demand for Intel-based servers.
• Companies are laying off employees, not buying them new computers.

1) Intel is not the bellwether that it once was. Personal computers and servers, the primary destination for Intel's processors, are not nearly as large a percentage of tech spending as they were back in 2001.

2) Layoffs in the economy have already begun. Fewer employees, fewer PCs needed.

3) Large companies are accelerating virtualization projects. Virtualization is a fancy word for running more applications on fewer servers. It is greener (less power), simpler (fewer servers to break), and cheaper. Good for companies looking to lower capital expenditure and operating expenses in a recession, but bad for Intel.

To be clear, I can't speak for anyone on the Gartner chart above. But I can offhand think of a half-dozen tech companies whose founders spent anywhere from $15,000 to $100,000 per year to keep an analyst "on retainer." In theory, they're paying for the analyst's firsthand counsel. In practice, they're paying the analyst to talk about them to the press and put them into reports. More than a "widespread practice," it's a standard business expense factored into the budget, just like the employees' health plan.

This is the food chain of what passes for fact in the Valley: The company pays the analyst, the high-paid analyst talks up the company, the low-paid journalist runs the analysts' quotes as instantly obtained "reporting." If I wasn't so bad at following instructions, I'd be cruising for an analyst gig right now.

Don't believe me? Try getting Jupiter or Forrester to give you even a partial client list.

(Magic quadrant of business-intelligence vendors by Gartner Research)

1998: Businesses will maintain separate networks for voice, video and data.

• ''What we try to do is demystify hype,'' Forrester's Maribel Lopez told the New York Times. ''The buzz, a lot of it has to do with data guys looking to sell the next router upgrade.''
• Jupiter's Abhi Chaki disagreed, correctly calling the convergence of phone and video networks onto the Internet "an inescapable reality."

2008: Businesses will not support the iPhone for a long time.

• "The features that make it a consumer success don’t necessarily translate to the enterprise," wrote Forrester analysts Benjamin Gray and Robert Whiteley. "IT can’t be expected to support each and every operating system their employees have brought into the company."
• Jupiter's Gartenberg spotted the Achille's heel in Forrester's argument: If the CEO, rather than the IT guy, brings one to work, "it becomes a de facto enterprise business tool."

(Photo by Michael Neel)

What it doesn't include is consumer services like Blogger, Facebook, Netvibes, and Twitter, says Forrester. These types of services are aimed at consumers and are often supported by ads, so they do not qualify as Enterprise 2.0 tools. Instead, collaboration and productivity tools based on the concepts of web 2.0, but designed for the enterprise worker will count as being Enterprise 2.0.