Borg Games

The feedback gathered after the latest AR Club meeting in London is interesting. It shows a growing dissatisfaction with the Gartner/Borg commercial practices, value for money and processes. Long gone are the days where most parts of the marketplace were "balanced" thanks to the META techno-utopians and where vendors could implement effective "dual-vendor" policies.

So it seems like the Borg is trying to sweat as much as possible from the resources they refer to as human by increasing analysts' billable time in several ways:

• There's been ample discussion, including with the only Borg analyst who should be credited for having the guts to come and discuss on this blog, about the Vendor Police trying to limit briefings to 30 minutes. Some vendors mentioned that Gartner is trying to force clients to use inquiry time for briefings. By decellerating and obstructing the effectiveness of the briefing booking process, vendors who can afford it simply book lots of advisory calls to take the place of the one briefing they and the analyst would have prefered. Furthermore, Gartner now bullies clients to buy an advisory user seat for EVERY participant who wants to speak. This might be great for meeting sales quotes, but it wastes the analysts' time and frustrates our spokespeople.
  
• Of course, some suspect the Borg want to monitor useage and divert inquiries to less busy analysts. Forcing briefings to be booked as advisory sessions increases all the usage ratios. It's even better if analysts who don't know very much are used: then one inquiry turns into three or four. That's a massive waste of everyone's time, but it makes all the rations looks great (apart from next year's renewal figure).
  
• Others have commented that the vendor briefing process is painful and is slowing down, not only for having to go through the Vendor Police (and having to fill in a form even if an analyst has informally pencilled in an appointment) but also being told in some cases that "the analysts were not available". We suspect that the system diverts requests from busier analysts to slacker analysts, regardless of their relevance. Therefore briefing requests either get declined or are accepted by analysts who want to look busy.
  
• The policy seems to be increasingly endorsed and enforced by sales teams.
  
• It seems that Gartner is also trying to discourage the use of SAS days for speaking engagements with tactics such as charging for travel time or bundling-in hyperinflated expenses, in addition to having dramatically increased the price. This of course prompts the question of value for money: how many more attendees can a vendor achieve by putting Gartner (or IDC, Forrester, Yankee...) on the speakers list? Will the choice of analysts affect the conversion rates?
• The expenses figure added on by Gartner really irritates us. It's a random variable that cannot be backed up. If Gartner was an accounting firm, a method like this would have Gene's perp walk on the front page of the Journal.
  
• The logic is of course to squeeze the lemon by boosting analyst utilisation rates (Gene Hall used the words "increase leverage").
• Gartner however have reportedly capped spending to 3% per vendor (which at the present going rate represents a nice $30 million, leaving plenty of progression margin for their largest accounts) and restricted the products offered to vendors (no white papers for instance -with possible exceptions in far flung geographies though?).
  

ARmadgeddon recommendations: with the Gartner Borg having as much as 40-50% market share, the RAS marketplace is now heavily concentrated. Vendors should strive to balance their RAS portfolio. Unfortunately, other global players such as IDC or Forrester are a far cry under Gartner for product breadth and brand recognition while regional players such as Ovum still fail to achieve the brand recognition they deserver because of poor marketing. Gartner is also hard to match when it comes to user reach and influence. On the events side, the picture is more contrasted, as the Symposia are certainly the largest but maybe not the most relevant/insightful and certainly not the best ROI. Research quality is more subjective (or maybe not?)
Vendors should therefore have a multi-sourcing policy and use the Borg in conjunction with independent analysts on a case by case basis. They should also look at developping other influencers (such as bloggers, academia, etc...)

Links:

• This We'll Defend
• Gartner Sales policing vendor interactions with analysts
• Is Gartner subtly going pay-to-play for briefings?
• Are the Gartner analysts stretched too thin?
• Borg softens 30 minutes rule
• Borg imposes 30 minutes briefing limit
• Deal Architect on changing the influence game
  
• Should AR run Influencer Relations?

H&K shoots at the Borg (and others)

Hill and Knowlton shares its acronym with Heckler&Koch, and reading the following post it maybe more than a coincidence?
Are you getting less for more from your analyst firm subscriptions? (ARcade)

Melissa Grant aims her guns at the Gartner Borg, IDC and Forrester for trying to screw vendors harder by segmenting their RAS offerings into an increasing number of silos.

ARmadgeddon's take: the Borg and others have long figured out that new clients acquisitions costs were high and that it was more profitable to milk their existing Forbes 2000 customers. Gene hall calls this increasing "leverage" (check report page 3: Substantial Operating Leverage in Our Business Model). The mood at IT vendors over imposed price increases have now reached boiling point and we foresee a backlash on renewals for RAS services whose value is not clearly demonstrable, especially in the case of an economic downturn.

Previous posts:
Borg Games
The Borg recedes in Oz and turns into high-tech sausage factory

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.

Rebels vs. Dinosaurs: Are new analyst business models that revolutionary?

The original IT analysis model was about selling detailed reports advising users on either products or pricing. It’s how Gideon started Gartner Inc. -something not mentioned here. One of the last surviving examples of this era, made of typing up (and sometimes translating) technology reports, and sell copies is Sievers – a quaint German boutique analyst. This model soon evolved into selling annual subscriptions. Then, value added services were added in the shape of inquiry time to make something known in the business as RAS: Research Advisory Services. The model is simple: write enough to keep subscribers hooked, make it difficult to understand to push users to use up their inquiry time and all sales then have to do is sell renewals. The 800 Borg reps still largely work this way and wake up at renewal time to negotiate the increase and go back in hibernation for 10 months.

On top of those staple offerings, analysts firms sell consulting days (SAS or Strategic Advisory Service in Borg speak) that vendors use for speaking engagements and pre-launch product messaging sessions. Users use consulting services from analysts for contract review, vendor selection and generally speaking to cover their backside when they’re making a politically charged decision. In the industry it is sometimes referred as to the BACS –Borg Ass Covering Service. Some firms also make good money from their events business (although this is more cyclical).

The clients for the services described above are both IT vendors and IT users, in variable proportion. Examples of IT analyst firms operating on a RAS model include Gartner Inc. (IT), Forrester Research, Inc. (FORR), AMR, NelsonHall, Ovum, Yankee Group Research, etc…

Those firms and some others have also sussed out that by speaking to all vendors, they could reverse-engineer their business model and work-out their market shares: this is what spreadsheet jockeys at IDC and GartnerDataquest do for a living. Note that since most journos have no clue whatsoever on the market, IDC and DQ enjoy a high SOV with their numbers being quoted by IT and business press day in and day out.

The clients for number crunchers are IT vendors (market shares tend to be quite useful for those strategic planning exercises at the end of every fiscal, and sometimes also for setting performance goals, at which point it usually goes pear shaped when a product manager calls up on AR to know why is product’s share is not doing great).

This is nice and simple, even if you add quite a large numbers of independent analysts, trying to make a living of selling white papers, consulting and speaking engagements to vendors.

However, two trends are changing the face of the IT Analysis industry: Open Source Research and Web 2.0. We’ve discussed open source research in this post and there have been great discussions on Jonny’s praise of open source analysis. Not to start over the conversation again, but we’d agree with Duncan that free at the point of delivery is not the result of a collaborative and transparent process where producers and consumers are the same. The lack of wikis (check also here) does not mean that James’ thoughts are not shaped by his interactions with the community nor than there’s not a vibrant community of independent analysts working loosely together –see The Enterprise Irregulars and the BritsGang for instance.

However, free does not mean valuable, rather plentiful and it makes sifting through bloggers and wannabe-analysts difficult for the AR professional trying to figure out who’s influential and who’s not. In that sense, the Rebels contribute to aggravate the “internet clutter” as expressed by Joseph Martin. Noise doesn’t equate with influence and this is why IT buyers like “reference libraries” –repositories of a single version of the truth. Gartner provides this and it partially explains their success.
Librairies are fine but someone to show you around is even better. Richard puts elegantly (or not?) here that the value of analysts is in the conversations more than anything else, that reports are only an entry ticket to the "inner sanctum". Egoes aside, a conversation with a good analyst is always the best way to cut through that clutter.... James would surely agree with this point on conversations but gives the research away -at no cost.

Redmoonk seems to be doing fine even though we see no Porsche in front of their offices, so one can wonder why doesn't everyone switch to open source research? The software and web markets are full of successful examples like at Linux, Wikipedia, surely the analysts can make a living from support (consulting) revenues just like Jboss, Red Hat, etc…?

There are two fundamental issues limiting the options for new entrants:

1. There’s a big difference between direct analysis (commentary) and in depth reports requiring primary research. At one end, there can only be so many James (thank God!): there’s intense competition, low barrier to entries but a given community has a finite attention span and number of relationships that can be established. On the other hand, primary research is expensive and needs to be syndicated –except if one relies on self-selecting samples and e-polls (see this honest comment from Dale here.

Few can comment eloquently on the issue of how different are sponsored research and open-source research. Dale, take this as an invitation: we’d love to hear your views on this very fine line…

2. Skip makes a really good comment when he says that monetizing new media is something we all are struggling with. Tough question, but the ones that will figure it out will make some serious dough and probably also crack the black hole of industry analysts… SMB. Ahem.


Bottom line: The industry is changing fast on the surface, yet IT analysts still have to figure out which business model will allow them to deliver something close to a collaborative “reference library”, containing one version of the truth rather than many in-compatible open-source distributions. Other factors limiting the adoption of open-source research are the delivery mechanisms (frankly, sifting through blogs to gather intelligence is as tedious as resolving Linux driver issues). On the other hand, the enthusiasm of the Rebels and their innovative use of Web 2.0 tools generate a huge deal of goodwill in some communities and some are already making a living of the brand they’ve built.

Stay tuned for the final post in the series: Rebels vs. Dinosaurs: So What Does it Mean for AR?

Read also:
Will the Borg be dis-intermediated?
The Governor, ancient Iraq and Gartner
Open source analyst business model?

A Borg in a closet

Stephen England scooped rencently that Gartner had decided to suspend their participation to third party surveys. Those are conducted by a variety of AR firms such as KGC and are really useful for AR professionals to evaluate their AR programmes.

The Borg is also very quiet on the blogging side which prompted James (McGovern) to ask some questions, although Geva say he's a bit harsh in his very good post.

Why is the Borg so secretive and closed?

James (Govermonk) would say they're not part of the conversation and he's got a point: what's Gartner contribution to the community?

Eggxodus (twice updated)

Two ex-Eggheads have posted rather alarming posts on the mother ship today:

• Trouble at t’ Ovum mill by Duncan Brown from Influencer50


• More departures at Ovum by Duncan Chapple (who rather surprisingly links to DuncanB's post)

The rumours key figures were leaving Ovum are thus confirmed by the Duncans: Ian Westley is retiring and Gary Barnett (ranked here quite highly) is leaving for a new venture still wrapped under a shroud of secrecy.

These departures follows a few others, including Cathy Ring (gone to Nelson Hall) and according to DuncanB "Ovum only has 6 SITS analysts left, from a core team of 17 prior to the acquisition by Datamonitor".

Apparently, many regret the good old pre-IPO times, the fun and debate even if it meant a less profitable business and despise the current management. The least we can say is that the culture clash isn't managed well by the Datamonibores, not surprisingly as the market research (churning out highly-leveraged off the shelf research) has in fine little resemblance with an high-end Telco/IT advisory service. Coincidentally, we heard of another departure on the Butler side as it seems Teresa Jones is joining to the Borg.

ARmadgeddon's take: although naysayers are predicting the death knell for Ovum in its current Telco/IT RAS form, there are still a few strong players at Ovum and Butler even though the current organisation and brands are confusing the marketplace. We can only hope for swift remedial actions to restore hope.

UPDATE: Anthony Parslow sent a long response to Duncan's (Brown) post and it contains some interesting points that were overlooked by Duncan (Chapple) as well as by ourselves:

• David Mitchell has been appointed SVP (he's got a picture on his bio) IT research -and he certainly knows about IT research business.


• Apparently the staffing projections were somewhat wrong as Ovum "should have 35 people in our IT Research team at Ovum by year end not 6", including Cornelia Wels-Maug (based in Germany) and Ian Brown (ex Borg, not ex-Stone Roses).

So, le's hope for the best: to have a local alternative to the Borg, with approachable analysts not stuck in research silos.

28/9 UPDATE: Richard Holway seems to think that the analyst turnover has seriously impacted Ovum's customer proximity.

Although the significance of loosing bright analysts such as the Neils and Gary can't be underplayed in what is first and foremost a people's business, it will nevertheless be interesting to watch whether Ovum can regain momentum while under a more structured management.

Previous posts:

• The big fish that ate the fish that ate the fish that...


• Datamonibores penetrates the gametes


• Ovum buys Orbys to grow outsourcing services [ANALYST EQUITY]


• Ovum targets vendors


• Ovum is floating -just about


• Ovum to IPO, Forrester loses sales VP


• Has Forrester missed a golden opportunity?


• Making it up While Drinking


• Ovum seeks intelligence head, Gartner Watch in quest of integrity


• Weekly digest


• Ovum breaks the iPod cellphone embargo?


• Ovum makes a move!


• Furl'ing: Ovum, Aberdeen and Gartner in the blogs


• Is Ovum ambitious?

Wra-up: Borg Audits and more...

We've been alerted by a reader that the Gartner Borg is stepping up its "audits": they're trawling their useage stats and sending warnings to those they suspect are passing on the research. Oooohhh, no AR or MI professional would ever do this, would we?

We suspect this might has something to do with their upcoming product for AR Managers....
The issue lies with the fact that the guidelines around "unfair use" are not public and it sems different rules apply, depending mostly on the overall contract value.

We also heard that the Borg is trying to enforce a policy that its sales reps should attend every briefing. It's quite unclear what they are trying to achieve but we would appreciate readers feedback.

Talking about feedback, it has been abundant and entertaining on our Datamonitor post: Datamonibores penetrates the gametes. It looks like Ovum analysts are in two camps: happy ones with shares to cash in and the others.

PS: we would be interested to have some readers feedback from the Cannes Symposium...

Borg for hire?

It is a pre-conception that the Gartner Borg is has an anti-vendor stance.

Richard (Stiennon, ex. Gartner analyst now independent) pointed us to this case study:
AXA Financial Uses BI to Help Focus Its Sales Force

It is hosted on Gartner's product, the reprint being paid for by a vendor through the Gartner Connects programme. While the Borg does not write commissionned white papers, this certainly looks like like the real McCoy...

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.

Borg softens 30mn rule

In an email today, the Gartner Vendor Relations (briefing police) and Ombudsman (IP police) appear to have read ARmadgeddon's posts on briefing length:

• the 30 mn limit is now only a proposal
• they recognise the vendor briefing request process is f****d-up, as vendors commented it leads to intolerable delays
  
• analysts can extend the time if they deem it "required to obtain maximum value from the briefing"

ARmadgeddon's comment: recognising a problem is a first step to correct it, we will be monitoring Gartner's briefing process closely in the coming months.

In the meantime, there has been a lot of interesting comments on what briefings are and how long they should be, mainly here, there and there:

• We agree with the analysts that vendors need to do a better job at briefings and to avoid death-by-powerpoint. Vinnie quite rightly says that briefings should be more focused ; that pitching to analysts is quite easier than pitching to the Wall-Mart procurement team.
  
• There seem to be a consensus that 30 mn are okay for a quick update on a specific offering but does not allow enough time for wide-area-analysts (WAA, as opposed to Narrow Silo Analysts)
• Dale and others however said that restricting briefings to a mere half an hour would eliminate the discussion. James argued that this was precisely what the Borg intended ; that it is an opportunity for independent analysts.

We look forward to today's call where the Borg will share its recommendations for AR professionals, and more.

Borg imposes 30mn briefing limit

So it looks like the Borg is about to limit briefings duration: Gartner limits vendor briefings to 30 minutes.

Vinnie, Dean and Jon have good comments on this, the two sides of the argument are:

Many vendors impose a death-by-powerpoint sentence to analysts with 3 hours and 54 charts briefing. This is BAD practice (see links below). A half an hour session should thus force vendors go straight to the point an be more productive.

Analyst briefings should be interactive ; 1800 seconds does not allow much of a two-way conversation.

ARmadgeddon is against unnecessary analyst cruelty and agrees that vendors could do a better job at scoping briefings to better address analysts needs. However, 30 mn is too short to allow for an interactive conversation. The fact that this new rule comes from the Borg is not a surprise as Gartner analysts tend to be more quiet and provide significantly less feedback than independent analysts during non-paid briefings. As a side note, arranging briefings through vendor relations takes Analyst Relations Managers anywhere from 1 hour to 2 days...

POJ's wrote a nice take on this on GartnerWatch: You have the right to...
His point that Gartner analysts would struggle to explain anything in less than 40 mn is spot on.


More from ARmadgeddon on analyst briefings:

AR 101: Jon Collins on briefing analysts

[Monkchips:] No Time Wasters Please: On briefing industry analysts

Redmonk: how to brief analysts

Experton: a new nemesis for the Borg?

The new Borg Nemesis, Experton, seems to be gaining some speed:

• [Analyst Equity:] Experton reels in more ex-META leaders

Check this hilarious discussion on who screwed up the most at META: was it the Brits or the Prussians? We wonder what Andy Bitterer has to say on this? (it would be interesting to see if the Borg are now censoring his replies to our blog?) See also previous posts on the same subject:

• Another META offshoot

And from Duncan who seems to have found new German friends (or bought a share in the new company):

• Experton reels in more ex-META leaders
• Praxmarer, Schmeiler and Bachmann join Experton
• Customer research continues to grow
• Experton Group launches Investment Advisory service
• Experton forsees 5% growth in German IT services in 2006
• Meton becomes Experton
• Experton forced to cancel conference
• Gartner hits Meton with legal action

And also:

• Ex-META Group XMG makes good progress

The inside track of Borg vs. Vendors

We have received this email from Silicon Valley Guy:

“I heard over in Orlando at various receptions, bars and other functions where alcohol was flowing, that one of the companies Gartner lists as a “Powerhouse Vendor” has not renewed its annual contract with Gartner. Evidently it was not related to research or any analyst commentary. What I heard – don’t know how accurate – is that this vendor’s market researchers thought that Gartner was not delivering much value for all the money being spent with it.
Wow, what a novel concept, expecting an analyst firm to deliver value and not just use the contract as a bribe!
I would never let my company do that for fear that the analysts would punish us. I admire this vendor for its stand, but I wonder how much retaliation it has already suffered. The Gartner Sales reps are always telling my company that the contract is important for the "relationship" -- which as near as I can figure out is some kind of code word for something.”

ARmadgeddon commentary: selling RAS (research and advisory services) and other products to vendors as a means to gain access to analysts is always tempting for sales. To their credit, the Borg do not sell white papers to avoid being seen retailing influence and in fear to compromise their brand. However, as they are now in a monopolistic situation, every move to exploit their situation will be scrutinised closely. For vendors looking to purchase market sizing or published research, there are numerous competitors in this space and we recommend to implement a dual vendor policy -at least for the quantitative research. IDC is a strong alternative to Gartner Dataquest in this area and each of them have different strength and weaknesses. Make sure to evaluate carefully those two players as well as specialist players (e.g. Canalys, Analysys, etc...) with a balanced research portfolio in sight. On the product evaluation side, look at Forrester, Evaluator Group, Ideas International, Ovum and other niche/regional players...

“I also heard – amazing how booze loosens peoples’ tongues – that Gartner Sales is playing hardball with other vendors as well. Gartner is doing such client-friendly actions as:

• Accusing clients of violating the contract and that Gartner might take legal action – but this only occurs during tough contract renewal talks, not during the year when the so-called violations are occurring and Gartner could have raised it earlier


• Raising prices without adding value


• Telling clients to cut back on the number of research notes downloaded or the number of inquiries even though the contracts states that there are no limits to these services

In addition to the vendor mentioned above, I heard that other major vendors have had enough with the G-men. Some went without a Gartner contract for weeks or months. Other vendors have severely cut their contracts. Guess what? All these vendors have survived and even prospered without having access to the Gartner analysts”.

ARmadgeddon comments: smaller vendors in particular tend to be bullied with these sorts of ttactics. We recommend suggesting the Borg you may go public or hint you're evaluating competitors.

Is Gartner going Symposium frenzy? Part 2/2

Following our previous post on the Gartner Cannes Fall Symposium (Is Gartner going Symposium frenzy? Part 1/2) on the content side this time, we would start with agreeing with Joe that there was no real news (read Does Symposium have a future?) and he may have a point as the Borg picking up noise and no real trend (read also Does size implies relevance?). His analysis leads him to predict Symposium the same fate as Comdex.

Gartner’s CEO, Gene Hall introduced the event. He evidently got himself a presentation coach after the nervous and wooden spring performance but was still reading from the prompter. We advise the Borg to purchase a W magic jacket and matching earpiece. The opening keynote was rehearsed OTT, long and not bringing much to the theme (Faster ROI) launched by Gene in the introduction. We suggest the Borg to make an effort to actually follow-through the theme during the whole event and to apply Fast ROI to their vendor clients, for instance by making sure the EXP crowd actually sets foot on the show-floor…

As for the rest of the content, it was not very different from the Barcelona gig and they obviously kept some in store for the Amsterdam Data Centre Summit.

Does size implies relevance?

Dan Scholler argues in his blog (Dan Sholler's Musings) against the Valley View Ventures paper “IT Industry Analysis Myths: Business of IT Industry Analysis Revealed”.

One of the interesting points of the discussion (read the comments from James Governor and Fred Abott) is whether size allows the Gartner Borg to be more relevant by “leverage[ing] the conversations with hundreds of clients in a short period of time, whereas an independent analyst is unlikely to be able to access the same volume of information"”?

We’ve commented numerous times before that the Borg is acutely afflicted by siloisation: despite Andy’s comments, we maintain that Gartner analysts do not have incentives to work with consultants (this conversation may be sooo yesterday anyway) but also that the information exchange within Gartner is poor, both across services silos and also between DQ and RAS analysts. This would indeed negate Dan’s point.

The issues caused by that siloisation are chiefly about interaction inconsistency (both in content and quality) for Gartner clients. We heard several user and vendor customers complaining about getting different analysts for each engagement, and of very variable quality.

There is however hope as the Borg management seems to be aware of the problem. We advise Gartner clients to remain vigilant on this point and to assess regularly their progress.

Rebels vs. Dinosaurs: Influence is Everywhere

In this post, we’re coming back on the numerous conversations about the changing nature of influence and its impact on industry analysts.

Fred from V3 started the debate a while back even though his paper wasn’t picked up by many: New Opportunities for IT Industry Analysts. Maybe it is because bloggers have a short attention span and find reading short posts easier? It nevertheless contains a few interesting points about influence in today’s world. In particular, Fred advocates that Web 2.0 allows analysts to reach out to a much wider audience than before, especially in today’s world where awareness of IT issues has become widespread in business.

Stephen has a good point though in his Burning The Influence Straw Man post: influence is exerted at multiple touch points in any given customer by various influencers. He claims to influence bottom-up adoption (those geeks installing Apache on Linux in a Mainframe under their desk). He implies that because established firms are conservative, geeks listen more to the blogs and it drives innovation.

O'Grady is probably right about the influence on those buying technical issues, but what about the top of the food-chain, the suits types with thick wallets? Who influences them?

Many have said that Cxx are probably not swayed by bloggers, so who do they trust?

Research by KGC, Omniboss and SageCircle points out that they trust mainly peers, Industry Analysts and Systems Integrators. The latter ones can be worrying for IT vendors: after all Accenture or PWC have probably way less understanding about cooling issues in a datacentre or database licensing than themselves, have a questionable track record after all but clients do trust them because they’re “independent”. It is fair game for AR Professionals to advocate that analysts know better: they have a tight relationship with vendors allowing them to be ahead under the game: they’re briefed under NDA. Those AR pros who are confronted on a daily basis with cynical comments and questioning by analysts know in their inner self they’d trust a good analyst above consultants.

James-the-mammal has also got a point here, but we're not sure which one?

Large customers also know this and anecdotal evidence suggests that analysts are influencing almost all large deals: AR managers often get feedback from those hard-nosed sales colleagues about the infamous Borg analyst advising THEIR customer (at least for IT deals, this is less true in telco’s and services). Note in passing: as someone said last week, they always win a deal thanks to their superior sales abilities, and invariably lose it because Gartner pushed a competitor… Incidentally, it’s always the Borg, we rarely get summoned on deals where The Colony or AMiseRy are involved. Sad and worrying but true. We wrote a while back on why Gartner and Forrester will NOT be Disintermediated: established firms just cut the "Internet Clutter that has turned internet searching into an exercise in frustration" (Joseph Martin). IT managers need someone to aggregate, summarise, simplify and help them with vendor selection, contract negotiation, etc… For instance, we heard Ovum was very successful in picking what business Gartner left on the table when they exited APac.

So, is that it? Gartner influences deals and the bloggers influence geeks? Life would be wonderful and AR would be able to concentrate on a few very influential analysts, give them the VIP treatment and escort the others politely back to their SecondLife world.

Unfortunately, life is more like a bazaar than a cathedral: not everything can be measured or even understood and so is influence. Coming back to Carter, he concludes his post by saying that other established firms should follow Gartner’s lead in Web 2.0 adoption (Note to Carter: interestingly enough, there were no Web 2.0 sponsors at the Orlando and Cannes Symposium and we view Forrester as much more innovative in the use of social media tools –Web 2.0 is more than just blogs).

Where does this leaves us? After an appetizing title, we were waiting for a better main course but Carter stops short of drawing a conclusion on whether the insurgents are (were) influential enough for him to care.

This is where Skip brings another interesting dimension: speed. Traditional analysts will be overtaken by communities and, he implies, lose influence. On the one hand, he’s right: bloggers are quicker on their feed and the good ones have an audience many mainstream media would envy. This is because the fundamental nature of Web 2.0 is that it ripples through communities and so does the influence of bloggers.


Analysts' influence also ripples onto mainstream media: one could think of them as tattoo artists that spot trends early and help shaping thinking of a much wider community. This extended-reach factor can be quantified in the number of press articles containing analysts quotes: way over half of IT trade press cuttings reference analysts. However, community often equates quantity and not quality: the internet chatter has grown to such a point that it is increasingly difficult to separate insight from noise, especially since blogs posts are short and sometimes cumbersome to read. This is probably the most limiting factor on blogs' influence.

We have been saying, way before Duncan Brown, that AR should mute into IfR –Influencer Relations. It seems that some vendors are already doing so: some have appointed Influencers VP’s, running Influencers events, etc… It does not suit every company as it requires a great deal of openness, candour and political capital. But it can be done, sorry for the doomsayers.

Another point is made by good old Jonny: the Borg does not cater for SMB’s. But Dale sure can! Vinnie has also an interesting point in his post on Gulliver's Travels (all those chaps should work for a tabloid –great headlines, just miss the page 3 totty): his revenues come from users and he’s well quoted. Not more scientific than Stephen’s name dropping but nevertheless hard to ignore?

We quite agree with Vinnie than quite a few of those Irregulars and other rebels are smart, some maybe too much for their own good but unfortunately we have been wating too long for those “Lilliputs” to join forces. The Federation never came out of the garage black hole!

Bottom line: Influence is difficult to define and even more to measure. Because it is far easier to getting budgets and headcounts to focus analysts directly impacting deals, AR has traditionally aligned to those directly impacting deals, the likes of Gartner, Forrester, Ovum, AMR, NelsonHall, etc… This is not necessarily the right model for every vendor.
Other boutique analysts and firms, are also influential and derive their revenues from end-user contracts, either in some countries (like Penteo, Sievers, CXP…) or in certain segments like Gartner alumni Vinnie Mouthful at Deal Architect.
Finally, a third type of influencers are those with a high SOV in the media, like for example IDC, PAC or Quocirca. Others such James Governor of Redmonk with his Monkchips and the other ones picked up by Jonny have a definite impact in the blogosphere.


Stay tuned for the next post in the series: Are new Analyst Business Models That Revolutionary?

Friday post: brownian scheduling

Analysts have usually little ideas how much work is involved in AR. Take scheduling for instance, it takes a hell lot of time to figure out where and when your exec might meet the analyst as both seem to be in a constant brownian motion between airports.

Stephen might have cracked gained many brownie points by publishing his schedule. Much easier than the dreaded Borg scheduling team, who comes back to your 3 days after you sent your request, and with a 30 mn slots. One more reason why you gotta love independent analysts: they're much more accessible if you need to do some message testing before a launch and easy to work with.

Another thing that AR professionals have to deal with is long, technical, boring briefing teleconferences. Maintaining your attention to jot down the follow-up points can be tough, especially after a relationship management lunch meeting. Don't read the Borg earnings release, there's nothing there: they're executing well, though not growing consulting very much. No new news. Best to try figure out what to do with your airmiles...

Is the Borg in bed with vendors?

Vinnie says the Gartner Borg is "defensive of vendors, especially large ones":
deal architect : The Stockholm Syndrome

Well, given the ammount of bitching we heard from AR professionals on Tragic Quadrants or renewals we doubt the relationship is as cosy as Vinnie says. However, for having witnessed the pitiful spectacle of a same VP being interviewed by Peter Sondergaard in 2002 and 2003 it is fair to say that Gartner analysts are not very challenging in public, so seeing Amy going against that trend is reassuring.

Is that what clients want though? Are C-level execs who attend Symposium expecting a Punch & Judy show?

ARmadgeddon's take: while there's a fine line between fruitless controversy the META way and challenging vendors in a balanced way, we nevertheless agree with Vinnie that the real value for users lies in the advice analysts provides buyers. Gartner's strategy of moving to a leveraged model and away from consulting, it might open up avenues for other firms offering negotiation advisory services.

The Borg "how to"

The Gartner Borg has sent its first AR Newsletter. Like it or not, they're good at selling and know their target audience -might be too well for most AR folks actually.
This newsletter is well thought and contains some good tips on briefing analysts:

• phrase well your briefing request to allow the vendor briefings teams to include other relevant analysts
• address hot issues upfront, resolve disagreement offline with the analyst after the briefing

ARmadgeddon's take: seasoned AR professionals might not learn new tricks however it is a good refresher and essential reading for AR newbies.

Forrester's kitchen nighmares

Forrester has announced their earnings in August and Dominic has reported that 3 new analysts just joined the firm in Europe:

Analyst Movements: changes at Forrester Research [ARcade]

Don't rejoice too quickly though, the news on the joiners are not as good as it looks: although we could add Kevin Lucas and Duncan Jones as a recent joiners (George Lawrie is also old news as joined over 8 months ago...) to Pete Nuthall, Forrester EMEA has nevertheless still lost Norbert Kriebel, Lars Goddell. Martha Bennett also jumped ships a while back... This leaves only Alexander Peters and Pete Nuthall as real new hires. We also heard that David Metcalfe was on the way out, although this is still unclear.

On the earnings side, sources at the company say they're pleased but they're still growing slower than their competitors. The AR community was irked by their absence of reaction following the assimilation of the market's #3 by the #1. Concerns that they could be used in a dual-vendor strategy grew further after they failed to explain their strategy a couple of years back. However, they since have come forward at a recent IIAR Forum and gave a compelling presentation on their business model and role-based strategy. Some still doubt whether they can effectively cover regional trends, technologies and roles with a still limited local presence -looks a bit like an episode from Ramsay's Kitchen Nighmares where the chef struggles to deliver 72 dishes combinations.

Is Forrester trying to be too many things to too many audiences?
Yankee for instance, during their own presentation at the last IIAR Forum were very clear that their strategy is all about focus on global connectivity issues.

However, despite coverage issues, Forrester's research remains more thought-provoking as opposed to the institutionalised Borg content. Their research agenda maybe quite random but the result is sometimes fresh thinking.
They're also more innovative on their approach of delivering research to their customer: here again it's hit and miss. Roles-based research may not work but as Carter says "Kudos to Forrester for permitting clients to comment on research notes". We wholeheartedly agree.


ARmadgeddon's take: while signs that Forrester is at last taking Europe seriously, we're still watching their delivery and resources commitment with great attention. AR Managers should use them as a second source after Gartner rather than merely a bargaining chip but still be aggressive while negotiating RAS contracts with them.

PS: we're looking for a good nickname for Forrester, all entries to be posted as comments below please

UPDATES:

• Barbara suggested the Colony or the Beehive -we like the former more and will adopt it.
• We received an email from Karyl Levinson, VP CorpComms at Forrester with some precisions:
  "We saw your recent post dated Oct 20 and simply want to let you know that Norbert Kriebel is still an analyst with Forrester. He has relocated to San Diego . Here’s a link to his bio should you want more information: http://www.forrester.com/rb/analyst/norbert_kriebel"
  Our apologies for the factual inaccuracy and thanks for the vendor review. As a side comment, this confirms that The Colony is more open than the The Borg -kudos to them for opening the kimono.

Previous posts on Forrester:

How to get a briefing from Forrester?

Summer revolving doors

The revolving door is in full spin...

Why Gartner and Forrester will NOT be Disintermediated

Has Forrester missed a golden opportunity?

Weekly roundup: Forrester, IT-director and Quocirca (Part II)

Vinnie shoots at Forrester!

Germany

After GigaWorld: the future for Forrester

Forrester's 2005 newfies

Furl Forrester archive.