> >What is the name of this
> consulting group?
>
> GARTNER GROUP, INC.
> Their response to my customer's inquiry has been written by :
> Brent C. Williams, Research Director
> Application Development & management Strategies (ADM)
> Gartner Group, Inc.
>
> >Is this consulting group a competitor of Microsoft related to
> >a database package?
>
The Gartner Group has pushed PowerBuilder for quite a while.
With all the time and resources they've invested in learning and
teaching PB, they sure don't want to admit something is just as
good or better and then have to learn something new.

As Ken Levy (see http://www.classx.com) has said, the advice
that the Gartner Group gives is often filled with inaccuracies.
This was the case when Ken worked at the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory.

And people pay good money for inaccurate opinions, too.