Tuesday 12 July 2005

Germany

This post by Duncan Chapple suggests that since Gartner threw the META consultants with the bath water, there's a large opportunity up for grabs, especially in Germany. But why is he surprised that Forrester is nowhere? Well, finally things move and we read (again in Dunc's blog, maybe he's got a split personality?) that Peter O'Neil, the former META Group Consulting EMEA VP has joined Forrester, together with a few others like Pascal Matzke and Larry Velez. Good luck to them, but this said we think they still are too thin on the grounds in EMEA to present a credible alternative to the Borg. For a start, they lack manpower to cover significant as hardware.

Back to the borgs, the feedback we got from within is consistent: analysts are not encouraged to be close to the consultants, they're also not really incented to sell consultancy. This was one of the characteristics of META (RIP). But again, this is in perpetual motion as we hear that G2 now also report to Peter Sondergaard who heads up the research, so let's hope for the best...

6 comments:

Unknown said...

There are some broader reasons why Gartner and Forrester were less successful than META in Germany. Principally, META adapted to local needs better. Gartner certainly is interested in winning some end-user consulting there, but having lost many of the META team it will be interesting to see how they progress.

What Gartner really faces in Germany are not competitors but substitutes: firms offering different sort of services, values and approaches.

(P.S. Your post mistakenly credits me with registering 'surprise' at the situation; in fact it's the German analyst I quote in my post who makes that point).

bitblue said...

A few comments:

1. Quite a few ex-META consultants made it over to Gartner. See my comment under Duncan's post.

2. Your "consistent feedback from within" is bogus. I work very well with Gartner consulting and know of many others that do, too.

3. If you try to be cute, then do it right: it's The Borg, not the borgs. Check your Startrek data.

4. If you would not hide behind your ARonaut handle, I'm sure you wouldn't use the Borg reference everytime you can. It's cheap to shoot from behind a fence. You wanna discuss analyst or AR issues, come out from your hiding.

Andy Bitterer
Gartner

ARonaut said...

On #1, what is the exact proportion? Not a few we gather....

Regarding #2, is it not true that Gartner analysts are not financially rewarded for working on consulting projects? Was that not the case at META?

Unknown said...

At least 15 of the former META team in Germany are with Meton now... http://analystrelations.blogspot.com/2005/07/meta-succeeded-by-meton.html

Anonymous said...

blimey - got andy's goat. i will have to start referring to the Borg all the time.... :-)

hello mr bitterer.

bitblue said...

Hi James, keep the goat. Her name is Uhura.

Later,
Andy a.k.a. Drone #26022