Briefing bloginvitation

Tim details here his next Adobe Analyst/Customer Day.

It's interesting on several counts:

1. The format is good, packed with customer interactions. Analysts like that kind of events and it should have a positive impact for Adobe.

2. The invite is on a blog, in the open. This is a departure from most AR events invites that tend to be more on the secretive side. This has a competitive impact as Tim is letting his rivals (Microsoft for instance) know of his event. He also has to extend the invite to all analysts who read his blog!

3. The wine should be good, ain't James?

Believe it or not? A rift between H&K and KCG

My sister always sounds happy for me when I tell that I'll be spending a day in downtown San Francisco. Although it just means a day working from the Courtyard, it does give me a few hours to exchange news with friends who work nearby. Given a lobby with both Starbucks and pretty fast WiFi I can multi-task, and multi-gossip.

The most repeatable story from breakfast concerns our friends at Hill and Knowlton and the guys at Knowledge Capital. It seems that H&K feels that KCG has been presenting H&K as if it's a happy customer of theirs. However, the opposite seems to be true. H&K ended its token partnership with KCG a few years ago, and didn't get much out of it. Now H&K is developing the same sort of advisory services, as well as metrics like those that KCG resells from Biz360 and Evalueserve.

Personally, my impression was that they have been buddies: I'm pretty sure I've seen H&K listed as a KCG partner, and Stephen certainly made me think they were close. Perhaps the two firms have drifted apart. My friend feels that KCG has continued to talk about H&K as if it gets its AR strategies and skills from KCG; meanwhile H&K has gone in its own direction, learning more from its work with Carter's team at HP can anyone could learn from KCG. KCG and H&K are now, more or less, full competitors -- even if H&K is more focussed on selling AR to exisiting PR clients.

This cold war has turned hot after a client asked H&K about its link to KCG. It turns out that KCG's materials referenced H&K. H&K has told Bill to remove all the references. My friend feels KCG has been too slow to make that happen. Everyone seems to be ratty with everyone.

Glancing at Bill's website, I can't see any references to H&K. However, I also think that KCG has pulled its client list from its website, perhaps temporarily.

Kiwi shed light on the Borg

We've been sent the following link (thanks Jeff):
Computerworld > It’s time to step into the light.

The main thread is a realisation that most reports are paid for and questionning on Gartner's credibility. This seems to be a growing concern in the press and should worry any AR professional (see alsoMore reations to the Information Week Credibility of Analysts article).

"Former employees say that where once the independence of Gartner and other large US-based research companies was totally accepted, there is now a level of discomfort about that same independence. "

Probably more interesting are the reports on how Gartner lost ground in New Zealand:

"But because of expectations in the wider Australasian region, the company withdrew from New Zealand and tried to sell its services from Australia. It has only recently reopened an office here. It is generally accepted that the company lost its ability to engage with its customers on a personal basis."

To save time on product selection, don't use Gartner?

An interesting piece of research was recently published on Gartner's web site:
To Save Time on Product Selection, Flip a Coin (by Jeffrey Mann) (password required).

The piece argues that users spend too much time and efforts in the evaluation process, should draw a short list, then randomly select a winner and stick with that decision.

Interesting advice. We wonder what Gartner consulting customers -who pay for selection and evaluation advice- think of this recommendation?

Is PR a dwarf planet?

Duncan has done the maths on an IDC report (does it make it an extrapolation of an estimation?) and figured out AR spend rose to 28% of PR spend [Analyst Equity]... which is still only 2% of marketing spend!

It would be interesting to compare AR and PR spend (7.1% of the same marketing treasure chest) with their respective impact on sales...

We bet that the results could be could have an impact on the PR planet... Any volunteers to challenge its status in the marketing galaxy?

The revolving door is in full spin...

Looks like the summer analyst job market is in full swing (see previous post Summer revolving doors).

David, him again, lists a few more in this other post: Analyst Insight: A few more analysts in Europe including:

• Jakob Heckscher joining IDC covering SCM and CRM
• Joao da Silva moves to the IDC European Mobile and Wireless team
• Phil Sayer and Ricardo Arruda both join Forrester covering telcos and Financial Services
• Pete Cunningham and Mehar Zulfikar joined Canalys
  
• Louella Fernandes joins Quocirca
• David Perry joins Freeform Dynamics

From another source we gather that Lee Geishecker resigned from Gartner (yet another high profile departure) where she was covering ERP and various other software bits. Does anyone know where she's going?

Summer revolving doors

David summs up various movements in this post: Analyst Insight: Various analyst changes.

In brief, Quocirca finally signed up a new analyst, Butler loses another analyst (fed-up with compiling door-wedges-reports?) and Forrester shrinks too. It looks like the latter still has some open headcounts to cover consumer markets and applications to further enrich their "molten core". Quite why they missed the train of departing soon-to-be-ex-META analysts still puzzles us...

How much then?

Stinky wanted to know how much a Gartner analyst makes...

The ARmadgeddon staff estimates (.3 probability) this to a range starting from £60k for a junior to £120k for a senior analyst.

Has anyone got comments?

Media continues to cite META Group

I have found a fascinating page at Topix. It tracks mentions of META Group. Interestingly, even though Gartner announced the purchase of that firm in 2004, there are some.

A great example is this story from May this year, in which a META Group analyst comments on Dell's performance.

How serious are journalists' conversations with analysts if they don't even check the name of the analyst firm they are citing?

Another one bites the dust

In the wake of SageCircle and Kensington Group, we can now report at Serendipp, a UK analyst relations consultancy, has also closed.

Readers might recall that last December we had some criticisms and harsh comments about that company. In Serendipp's opinion, "Analysts only do two things: size markets and do case studies".

Our comments was this: "This is so far from being right, it's not even worth calling wrong. Sizing markets and writing case studies is what gets outsourced to India. The real work of analysts is quite different: and that is why analysts have substantial advisory, consulting and custom research businesses. If an AR advisor doesn't realize this, then heaven help their clients."

Indeed, the company has now closed. A posting on the firm's blog explains that those the firm's partners have taken employment elsewhere. Rest in peace.

However, this story has a little tickle are the end. Our chiding of Serendipp last years ended this this comment which, in hindsight, is amazing prescient: "It would be far better to understand one's limitations and keep only do what you know how to do. In that respect, kudos to Hill & Knowlton. If Duncan's latest post is correct (my Norwegian is rusty) their European AR is led by their partner agency in Oslo, Gambit, which hired a former IBM AR manager in 1999."

What's interesting is that one of Serendipp's partners has been hired by H&K to work on its European analyst relations. Let's hope his boss in Oslo doesn't let her analyst relations business go the same way as Serendipp.

Blon-idc and briefing 101

David posted those links recently:

IDC analyst going blonde (Analyst Insight: Mobile analyst goes blonde for charity)

and this briefing 101 from a Yankee analyst, well worth a read even if you've been doing AR for a while [The Human Capitalist:] The Vendor Pitch

Gartner bullies Redmonk (and then apologises)

The summer was going to pass by whitout major events (apart from the World Cup of course) when Gartner suddlenly headbutted Redmonk:

James Governor's MonkChips: My First Gartner Cease And Desist: the missing link

Now, this is quite funny -the only thing James did was to post this link on his blog, there. And Gartner issued a cease and desist, for deep linking probably?

Although we have great respect for some Gartner analysts, it's probably fair to say that the Borg behaves itself like a bully. It was until now confined to vendor relations but this Borgian trait seems to be spreading....

17/7 update: commenting on a subsequent post where James publishes the incriminating email, Allison from the Borg Vendor Police apologises for their bullying. Borg 0 - Blogosphere 1.

IDC and DQ: sausage factories?

Witty comparison from Cambashi between market numbers and sausages:
Everyone likes sausages Jun 2006

Ovum targets vendors

Ovum, which has recently IPO'ed (read this) is buying
Summit Strategies, a US firm doing business mostly with IT vendors (consulting and commissionned white papers).

Ovum had already forayed across the pond with the RHK purchase, however this time they're targeting IT vendors and not IT users: although Ovum is indeed selling research and advisory services (RAS, in plain English consulting days and access to a research library) it does not typically accepts commissionned white papers from vendors -which is Summit's business.
It will be interesting to see how Ovum deals with the integrity issue (for memory, Gartner killed META Group's white papers offering when it took it over).

Bottom line: Ducan seems to think Ovum is doing well but
we still are reserved as to whether they are capable to position themselves as a credible alternative to the Gartner Borg outside a few markets such as telcos.

We get roasted for pro-Gartner bias

Perhaps Hugo Chavez will be the new face of Hugo Boss, but that would not surprise me more than a comment on Catherine Heltzerman's blog. This post includes a fascinating comment about us:

Armadgeddon excited me to start with, but I am increasingly surprised at how pro Gartner all their analysis is especially given they go under a nom de plumes.

This is a fascinating comment from James Governor. The idea that this blog is pro-Gartner will be a shock to post readers, especialy those who have read this series here.

What's eating James? Does he really think we are pro-Gartner stooge, or is it just than we don't really rate his firm on a par with them?

Answers on a postcard please to ARmadgeddon, PO Box 666, Stamford, 06902. Or post your comments below.

[Analyst Insight:] Forrester's latest AR Council initiative

David reports here a very daft idea:
Analyst Insight: Forrester's latest AR Council initiative

Why on earth would a vendor want to invite other vendors to one of their briefings?

The only explanation we can find is that there's been some space-cake abuse during a brain storming at Forrester's Amsterdam office.

We've posted before (here, here and there for instance) and to be frank we struggle to see their relevance -here in Europe at least. We can't see thought leadership, their sales efforts are timid at best and we haven't seen much of a strategy.

Despite garden, Oracle isn't mellowing

According to Berkeley's heartthrob analyst, "The hottest rumor in recent weeks among analysts was that Oracle’s head of analyst relations had lost her head in a power struggle".

Josh's article explains that vice-president Peggy O'Neill was thought to have been ousted because of growing frustration with Oracle's highly controlled analyst relations.

We are scratching our heads at that idea. Here on the ARmadgeddon campus, there's general agreement that agressive management of AR is more likely to be rewarded at Oracle than punished. Remember, it's hard-nosed Oracle that bought the PeopleSoft hippies, not the other way around.

If Oracle didn't intent to play to win, then they had the opportunity to change course in 2003. The evidence suggests to us that Peggy's tactics are fair, but people still asked Oracle to mellow and cut analysts more slack. They have not, and we don't see a growing demand inside Oracle for the firm to loosen up, even if Larry's main interest is his Japanese garden.

Mind you, the very idea of Peggy leaving Oracle is interesting. If she was to switch career, what would she be well suited to? Answers on a postcard, please.

The Borg mexican army

During a teleconference yesterday, Gartner's head of research Peter Sondergaard (or is it Dale Kutnick?) announced a reshuffle to accomodate the new role-based research structure. The new execs and their research groups:

• Mike Lafford: sourcing & vendor management (they wrote vendors, not IT providers :-)
  
• Jane Doorly: security & privacy
  
• Jamie Popkin: business intelligence and information Management
  
• Joe Baylock: IT infrastructure and operations
  
• Val Sribar: applications management
  
• Jennifer Beck: business of IT (whatever that is)
  
• Bruce Bond: vertical industries (isn't that a pleonasm?)
  
• Mike Harris: Dataquest (Gartner's number-crunching bunch)
  
• Satoshi Yamanoi: Japan research
  
• Jenni Lehman: research operations (analyst's bosses)

These are only internal changes in the Borg Mexican Army (over 70% of their analyst have "Vice President" in their titles but we have failed to identify to this day whether they really mean "Vices Preside"). The net impact for AR professionals is minimal as so far the new roles-based structure is more an internal reorg. However, Stephen England from KGC "bloviated about" the fact this could signal the Borg may price each research group separately, thus forcing vendors to buy more seats.

No new news there Stephen, just the usual highway robbery from the Borg.

Sageza ties in Tony

Looks like the UK analyst scene never stays still (see Is there an afterlife for analysts?, Becoming an analyst, getting it right and being paid for it! and Making it up While Drinking)
as we learn today that Tony "fancy ties" Lock is transferring from Bloor FC to Sageza Dynamo for an undisclosed sum this month.

Tony will probably play in the infrastructure frontline and continue to press for the formation of a European league together with his new colleague Joyce Becknell. Other clubs in the league are of course MWD and Freeform Dynamics, with more rumoured.

The coach Clay Ryder is said to be delighted with this new addition to his squad. Poor old Justin though...

Want a job at Microsoft?

Well, if you're an analyst you might stand a good chance. Following suit from a few ex-colleagues (read Microsoft boosts its AR and Microsoft hires from Gartner, right, left and centre!), we have heard a rumour that Larry Velez is leaving Forrester for Microsoft.

Larry might need to do something about hairstyle... (compare him vs them)