What RSS and Echo mean to Mr. Safe's Gartner

In all the discussions with Mr. Safe (here, here, here, and many more I'm sure), I've been wondering what happens just after the conversation when Mr. Safe is left alone in his office.  Tim Bray's original conversation with Mr. Safe ends this way:

Mr. Safe: Thanks, Tim. I think we’ll consider putting this on the schedule for an IT task force to take a real serious look at once we get through this fiscal year. Sorry I have to let you go now, but I have business to attend to.

I'm guessing one item of "business" might be a quick call to Mr. Safe's Gartner analyst.  Fortune 500 CIOs pay these guys lots of money to keep them ahead of the curve, right?  I did a little bit of digging, and I think that conversation will be very short:

Mr. Safe: Mr. Gartner, what's this RSS thing I'm hearing about?

Mr. Gartner: Just a moment, Mr. Safe.  [types a search for "RSS" into gartner.com and pauses].   Ah.  So you're looking for a tape backup solution?  I can dig up some information on Seagate's Removable Storage Solutions, or RSS, line of products.  You might know that they changed their name to Certance back in April.

Mr. Safe:  I don't think that's it.  I thought it had something to do with XML.   Got anything on this Echo business Jon Udell was telling me about?

Mr. Gartner: [searches for "Echo" on gartner.com] Looking for a VoIP solution, Mr.Safe?  Network switching gear? 

Mr. Safe: Hmm.  We must not be talking about the same thing.  Oh well, never mind.  If you guys don't have anything about it in your research, it must not be that important.  Hey, can you put me down for the Gartner Symposium in Orlando in October?   Are you up for a round of golf while I'm down there?

Mr. Gartner: Sure thing.  Talk to you soon.  Bye.

Gartner is not alone among analyst firms in ignoring RSS.  Mr. Safe wouldn't find much searching for RSS at Forrester other than how to "boost margins with merchandise optimization."  Nothing at Giga (which owns Forrester) either (you'll have to search yourself since they chose POST over GET).   [Correction 07/14/03: Forrester owns Giga.]  Call it whatever you want, it's invisible to these guys at this point.  That doesn't mean that it's not important (it is!), just that a lot of people have zero visibility on it right now.  Maybe that means it's a good time to make some changes while no one is looking.

(I do have to hand it to Gartner for having some form of weblogs on their site, though it would be nice to have RSS feeds associated with them.)