AR 101 series: the research process

In this post, the ubiquitous James Governor points to a post by a Richard Monson-Haefel, an analyst at Burton Group (a US RAS client-side firm): Burton Group’s Brutal, but Effective Review Process. It is an interesting and detailed insight into a firm's research process.

ARmadgeddon's tips: AR professionals should do their research and me aware of the research process followed by the firms they track. Questions they should be able to answer are:

• Do you have a research agenda?
• Do you publish different kind of notes?
• If yes, do they follow the same validation process?
• Do you review research notes internally?
• Do you systematically send your reports for vendor review?
• Even if the vendor is not a client?
• Do you send the whole document or just the portion related to the vendor?
• Do you accept discussion on your positions and recommendations?
• Do you communicate on changes made?
• Do you take calls to discuss the review?
• Even if the vendor is not a client?
• What turnaround time do you expect from a vendor?

An after thought on Serendipp

Lunchtime are made for Google, aren't they? I've been trying to find out a bit more about our new friends at Serendipp, Ahmed and Dominic. Dominic used to be COO at SalePlane, so I ran this Google search to find out more. For some reason, the one link that comes up goes through to a Metropolitan Police warning about internet fraud.

Forrester's 2005 newfies

Just so that it's convenient for everyone, here are Forrester's 2H05 new EMEA hires:

ANALYSTS:

• Larry Velez, Global and European WAN procurement; VoIP communication architecture, infrastructure development (ex. META)
• Jenny Lau, Advice to mobile operators on strategic issues like mobile commerce, 3G mobile networks and services, and enterprise mobility; strategic advice to mobile telecom vendors and firms looking to launch mobile services
• Pascal Matzke, European IT services and outsourcing trends, as well as underlying vendor market dynamics; IT services and sourcing strategies (ex. META)
• Euan Davis, European IT services and outsourcing trends, as well as underlying vendor market & end-user dynamics
• Peter O’Neill, Focus: Infrastructure Management (ex. META)
• Name can’t be disclosed – Security Analyst
• Cliff Condon, How European financial institutions can use emerging technologies to improve the retail customer experience (channel distribution, self-service delivery, changes in business models)
• Luca Paderni, Consumer marketing, consumer trends, branding, consumer strategy, online advertising, and online retail (including online banking)

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

Ahmed Argues Against ARmadgeddon

Ahmed Siddiqui has written in self-defense against our earlier post:

As someone who has worked as an analyst at senior level (and who knows many other senior level analysts intimately), I reiterate and clarify: the source of most analyst opinion and data is from market sizing and developing case studies of clients, vendors and markets. How this is actually used is secondary to your own original point. It can go into published work or can form the basis of the credibility and trust used to win consulting work. Any analyst who cannot understand the market sizing process or create case studies- whether it be for a report, building an RFP for a client, or advising on vendor capabilities- isn't worth his/her salt. Market sizing and developing case studies is pretty much must of what analysts do. And as my posts says, the AR function is still important for this, just as it is for the bigticket consulting work.

I would love to hear readers' comments on Ahmed's opinion. Personally, I am baffled by it. Ahmed worked for Datamonitor's London headquarters, and his account makes me think that most of his time was spent sizing markets and writing case studies. I understand that as individuals, we primarily judge the world on our own experience of it. However, it seems to me to be self-evident that most analysts outside Datamonitor are not spending most of their time sizing markets and writing case studies. Market sizing is an activity primarily conducted by vendor-facing analyst firms, or by specialist teams like Dataquest. Many analysts are looking at the features and benefits of solutions, rather than the market shares of vendors.

Ahmed knows many analysts, as he points out. However, his fresh face compares favorably to my wrinkles. I deeply believe that I have met, and worked, with many, many more over the years [and years]. Very few are focussed on market sizing, outside IDC and Dataquest. As for case studies: how many analysts send more than a day a month working on them?

The gap in our viewpoints astonishes me. I appreciate that analysts are more quantitative in Europe, but are the differences so deep that mosts analysts there are engaged in such highly structured, and easily offshored, work? Can anyone think of a good reason why our views are so distant?

Do analysts only size markets & do case studies?!?

The wonders of Trackback! I've discovered Serendipp's sniping at us and Duncan. We are "almost hedghoglike" while Duncan is "bilious".

I am not familiar with Serendipp, but it seems they are AR advisors in England. Good luck to them because, if their blog is evidence, they have a lot to learn.

They feel that we and Duncan are missing the point in our discussion about analysts and how deeply they need to research: 'Analysts only do two things: size markets and do case studies'.

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.

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 Norweigan is rusty) their European AR is led by their partner agency in Oslo, Gambit, which hired a former IBM AR manager in 1999. It takes guts to admit when you need help, but it's much wiser than pretending you know what you don't.

Feedblitz now available

Thanks to James' tip, we've set up Feedblitz to allow readers to receive ARmadgeddon by email. Just enter your email in the box on the bottom left-hand side of this screen and bingo!

Or just follow this link: http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=11014

C'mon guys, sell to us!

Analyst Relations is a quite stressing job as AR professionals sit between external and internal constituencies and try to make both happy. What AR managers don't need is more aggravation when they want to work with analyst firms, but it seems that it's exactly what's happening: analyst firms in general do a terrible job at selling themselves to vendors. One of the reasons is that analyst firms sales reps try to SELL when often analysts often feel their ethical boundaries are being pushed. We imagine the conversations inside some firms between sales and analysts sales going like: "Would you be nice to my client so that they can buy reprints?" followed by "Do you mean I should tell something I don't believe in?"

We'll leave them to decide where they want to draw the line, for instance and to their credit, the Borg don't sell white papers (but do read Post-scriptum on "Yankee, analyst impartiality and circular references" for the caveats).

However, we thought analyst reps could do with a few ARmadgeddon tips to improve their sales process. Most of them are very basic but we've seen those mistakes many times.
So, hear, hear, sales reps:

1. Sales lead: track those those converations your analysts are having with vendors, invite yourself to brefings. Too often, reps have little idea of research agendas and of vendor marketing plans.


2. Qualified prospect: follow-up with your AR person to see if there's a real need.


3. Need identification: for complex projects, do schedule a conversation between the analyst, AR, the vendor's decision maker(s) and don't forget to include the consultants who'll end up doing the work. For speaking enagement, come back with topic and spokesperson real quick.


4. Proposal (business): it's amazing how long it takes for IT Analysis fims to send vendors a proposal. Get it out, even if it's sketchy or you'll loose the sale. If it's a speaking engagement, you need to turn around in hours, not in weeks! An email will do, but please do us a favour: make sure you include VAT number, physical address, firm name and delivery dates…


5. Closing: again a basic skill but it seems that some analyst firms can't be asked to call to close a sale! Amazing…


6. Deal transaction: we've seen so many firms being rubbish at admin. Send the invoice and get paid!

Another common mistake is not fitting into vendors budget processes. If a vendor closes its fiscal in March, make sure you get in their FY+1 plans in before February!

Finally, don't make the common but fatal mistake of not involving AR: they can and will block your proposal if they feel it's not addressing a need or simply if you bypass them. Help them and they'll help you.

Deal Architect on changing the influence game

Vinnie Mirchandani posted in his blog Deal Architect on The Changing Influence Game after discussing this with HP's AR chief Carter Lusher on this ARmadgeddon post (check the comments).

His views are worth a read: he suggests technology vendors need to look beyond the PR+AR+IR influence trio and start addressing procurement consultants (including Gartner's) and blogs. The comparison he uses in lieu of conclusion is striking -and smart.

While we agree that the sphere of influence is changing, we would also add that vendors need to do a better job at focussing on AR and ressourcing it properly. James give a couple good reasons why in this post: Analyst fingerprints on billions of HP’s revenues, Gartner 0wns GAO. Once it's covered, it is surely a good idea to address those second tier influencers... maybe with the exception of systems integrators (Vinnie mentions Accenture and we can't agree more that their consultants also need to be brought up to speed by tech vendors).

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

This is the third instalment of last week's round up ‑following Weekly roundup: Forrester, IT-director and Quocirca (Part I) and Weekly roundup: Forrester, IT-director and Quocirca (Part II).

We'll conclude this serial post with Quocirca who are now actively recruiting analysts (wannabe must send CV to Clive) after loosing John Collins who went writing another music book (after Rush and Marillion) and Dale Vile who went with his wife Helen (also ex. Quocirca) to form Freeform Dynamics. They just formed a partnership with The Register to use El Reg as an outlet for their research and plan to tap onto its reader's base for research and surveys. It's interesting to note that Quocirca was (or still is???) a partner of The Register… Anyway, this seems like an obvious duplication with what Justin's boyz have launched on Wednesday. While we're talking about Quocirca and in guise of conclusion, Dave pointed out that Clive Longbottom has started a blog hosted on IT-Analysis (for more on this, see Weekly roundup: Forrester, IT-director and Quocirca (Part I)). But COME ON Dale, you need to post something now –perhaps not a novel every time tough! And also, we'll argue that this is not a real blog: as Catherine says here, you miss comments, trackbacks, serial entries and RSS. Tsss, no comments Dale, bad boy!

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

Following up on our previous post Weekly roundup: Forrester, IT-director and Quocirca (Part I), here's the rest of last week's round-up.

On Friday, Forrester organised a breakfast for AR professionals, which was very well attended with over 50 AR (lost of blue chip AR but also some AR agencies and smaller firms represented). On the Forrester side, we had Ian Taylor, Principal for the Oral Programme (their AR "club" with membership fee), ex. META Group Consulting Peter O'Neill, now turning infrastructure analyst, Martha Bennett, VP & research director for their European financial practice and Luiz Olivera, runs the ARM council in Europe. No execs, just the ubiquitous Dunc' who pitched on AR rules: be candid was the key takeaway.

The rest content was... interesting. Martha came out very well with content and with her top vendor peeves about analysts and vice versa (Read David's post for the detail: Forrester: Biggest moans about vendors). All entertaining. They also provided some trends on the industry, and amongst other things predicted IT vendors would stop selling directly to users by 2010. Things got even more interesting when some vendors asked if they intended to cover hardware -which in Forrester's view is becoming less strategic/important. Peter O'Neil was at pains to explain why he got the job to cover infrastructure, when his new colleagues predict it's going down the drain. Someone asked a quick run down on Forrester's strategy and they seemed to collectively struggle to answer. Martha hopefully gave an elevator pitch but they were clearly not at ease. And Luiz rushed through the Analyst Relations and & Marketing council, which is a combination between a gated community and a RAS seat. At £21k a pop, including event tickets and a dedicated contact. Oops.

The opinion of the AR professionals we spoke to was that the event was inconclusive at best, we learnt nothing on Forrester's strategy and differentiators, nor did they give vendors any good reasons why they should do business with them.

So what was the point? For AR professionals, great networking opportunities as David puts it. On Forrester's side, it's quite unclear what they were trying to achieve: maybe this was a lead generation for the ARM council but they never really got down to the sales pitch. It's quite striking that Forrester, alike most of its competitors, don't know how to address the AR community –one of its key decision makers/influencers! The pastries were nice though, thanks for the brekkie...

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

This is in fact the roundup for last week, which has been quite eventful indeed.

On Wednesday and at last, Justin Speake and his mates re-launched the newly spun off IT-Analysis, as a multi-analyst firms delivery vehicle. In other words, it’s a web site where research from various firms such as Bloor Research, Evalubase, Hewson Group, Hurwitz, IE4C, Luenendonk, Macehiter Ward Dutton, Metra Martech, Quocirca, Sageza and TechConsult is hosted. Delivery is free for most but the web site sells research through Infoedge, guidance through Amazon and is also supported by advertising (has anyone got memory problems?)

For more details, both David and Duncan (interesting to note that he was invited to speak but never made it to the stage –let's blame Lewis PR for that?) have published extensive posts on this:

• [Analyst Insight:] New research portal opens up with IT Analysis re-launch


• [Analyst Equity:] IT-Analysis.com completes spinout from Bloor

We'd agree with David that everyone wins: small analysts get more exposure (fragmentation of the independent analyst world makes it difficult to navigate), users get a lot of research in one place and vendors get more visibility for sponsored research.

Overall, the business model is interesting and probably over time an alternative to the Borg: is that a first step towards open source analysts? We'd love to hear James' opinion and even more to see him join!

Just one comment for Justin though: you should replace the term "articles" by "research notes" or "reports"…

(to be continued)

Read also our previous post on Justin's plan: Have you seen my plan, my plan, my plan?

Microsoft boosts its AR

Gartner Watch reports that two ex. Borg Members have joined Microsoft: Anne Marie Roussel, Mika Kramer. Are they going in AR or is it a sign that Microsoft is ?
In addition, we heard they've hired Naomi Higgins from Peoplesoft.

ARmadgeddon keywords

This month brought an interesting set of keywords leading to our blog:

• armageddon ovum
• kgc association
• microsoft pr
• west kensington
• fred amoroso

Interesting indeed...

And as far as links, quite a few interesting ones too:

• through a Google: Catherine, Chris, David, Andrew and others...

Norma becomes president of rs-unix

It's a loss for the analyst relations world: today I heard that Norma Larosa has been hired as President of rs-unix, an IBM reseller up in San Francisco.

Norma will be well known to AR veterans as co-founder, with Efrem, of Kensington Group, Inc. (KGI).

Norma was been one of the most widely respected and trusted AR advisors through the 1990s. KGI became part of MetaSource in 2002, but the new owners were not able to give KGI the backing it needed to grow. After KGI decellerated, it wasn't able to offer clients the sort of support they wanted. Of course, analyst relations needs are developing all the time and weak support from MetaSource wasn't enough to keep KGI ahead of the market.

Efrem returned to academia in 2002 (through he still does some research and training through Lighthouse). Through 2003 and 2004 Norma worked hard to keep some of KGI's services running for existing clients. KGI's website hadn't been worked on since 2003, and that reflects how she was focussed on meeting existing clients' needs. Earlier this year the KGI website was taken offline, and not much as been heard from Norma since.

In the long run, even someone with Norma's intense client loyalty cannot have her interest held by a low-growth mature business.Her skills are very broad, and rs-unix look set to gain.

KGI's collapse, like SageCircle's, shows the rapid maturing of the AR market. Nimble firms like KCG, ASG and Lighthouse have been able to deliver similar value at lower prices by copying those pioneers. Norma has not left a minute too early. We wish her every success in the future.

My customer is not your client, or why RAS analysts need to go beyond DRE

Following up on 79.7% of all Gartner RAS statistics are made up, part of the mis-understanding between RAS analysts and vendors AR is down to the customer set surveyed, aka sample size and dispersion. RAS analysts (Gartner, Ovum, Forrester) need to recognise that they have often a much smaller sample size (amazingly, not everyone consults the Borg!) and this sample may be distributed quite unlike a vendors client set. Another factor is that RAS analysts tend to (re)act to client queries. End-user clients tend to pick-up the phone to the consult analysts when thy have an issue, not when their application or piece of kit works just fine (happens apparently). This explains why analysts are often the bearer of bad news and are reluctant to cover stuff that does what it says on the tin. For analysts, one could also argue that such behaviour drives their consulting revenue?

Another sample skew is about geographical and vertical distribution: vendors have a far greater sample size but obviously the dispersion is skewed towards specific industries or geographies where that vendor is stronger. So if you're doing great in say AsiaPac where analysts tend to be thinner on the ground, it's tough to get that recognised by analysts.

Finally, as as SVG points out, it would be nice RAS analysts could be a little more thorough with research and avoid discovering "trends" which are often only based on very few data points.

ARmadgeddon recommendation:

• VENDORS need to be open with analysts, share installed base demographics and maintenance calls data (at a high level).
• RAS ANALYSTS need to stop annoying AR with "my client this, my client that" statements and work on their own demographics too; they need to also start covering products that are not generating enquiries.

Are Outsell and Gartner’s blogs real blogs?

As blogs move out from the early adopters community into mainstream, what had to happen is is happening. The spirit of blog is being perverted from the ideal of a participative forum enabled by tools into something which is in fact just a "diarised web" page as as "pseudo-bloggers" do not enable comments on their "blogs". We’ve posted on this before at Gartner’s expense (see Symposium Blog and Gartner Ombudsman Strives for Control) but discovered today another example: Outsell Now does not allow comments either. Shame.

We thought James Governor may have an idea on the question, now that he’s back into action…

Ovum seeks intelligence head, Gartner Watch in quest of integrity

Not a very good title, we agree. Nevertheless, those two posts caught our attention today:

• Gartner Watch has a very good post On Bias and Conflicts of Interest, which raise a few good points.
• Analyst Insight reports some news about Ovum's new practice structure in Ovum to appoint head of "industry intelligence". Good but we'd love to see more details!

Gartner rediscovers price benchmarking

Tekrati reports here that Gartner just expanded its “IT Outsourcing Price Benchmarking Service”. This was a service that META Group used to offer and it’s, hem, interesting to observe that it took the Borg 8 months to discover it. Many vendors liked this approach better than the cost based benchmarking Gartner still offers. The Borg may finally have come to realise what META Group Consultants were up to? Shame it decimated the lot though…

Ex. Quocirca founder launches Freeform Dynamics

We planned to post on this earlier but Dave got there first: read [Analyst Insights:] Quocirca analyst starts new firm.

Dale Vile has sent us an email to describe this new venture he formed with Helen (Vile) and his web page advertises the following:
"The company was founded on the principle of adopting a more freeform approach to analysing the business impact of developments in the IT and communications markets. As boundaries come down, lines between solution categories blur and convergence takes place at both a technology and a business level, this approach provides more accurate insights into industry dynamics than the traditional category driven research model."

Still confused? Here are the coverage areas:

• "Communication and collaboration: Convergence, mobility, service provision, information sharing, collaborative working
• IT infrastructures and application architectures: Virtualisation, utility / grid computing, Web services, SOA, enabling middleware
• Customer Relationship Management: Call centre solutions, field service automation, sales force automation, best practice
• Resourcing / Outsourcing: Professional services, outsourcing, off-shoring, platform hosting, application hosting

All this at a business level. Sounds like Dale's getting into an already crowded train...

Our point of view is that the independent analysts marketplace is a very fragmented market with few strong brands. It makes them more difficult with and leverage for vendors (their main clients). However, they balanced this with low overheads enabling them to undercut larger research firms. We however think there is a space for collaboration ; this may be what James is calling Open Source Research?

Seen the release about her silver frequent flyer card?

A friend of mine just sent me a press release to about Absolutely PR’s Maggie Chamberlin Holben. She now has certification as an Industry Analyst Relations Practitioner. Take a look.

I really know the meaning of a slow news day but this is the very opposite of news. The IARP multiple choice quiz is simpler than some hotels' hang-on-your-door-knob breakfast order forms.

The real quiz is this: did Maggie think she was helping KCG? Or did KCG think it was helping Maggie? It looks pretty lame either way.

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.

Weekly digest

The AR blogging community has been busy this week:

• Analyst Equity: Duncan comments back on his ex. Colleagues in Ovum revenue to top 35 million again, apparently doing well and hiring within Yankee ranks: Roger Entner, Chris Lewis and XJ Wang are the latest transfers.  Our opinion is that Ovum prefers growing organically (question to Duncan: does low power distance ratio goes well with risk adverse?) and could do more to exploit the gap left by META Group, especially in the consulting segment. But yes, they’re nice lads…


• Talking about Yankee, Tekrati reports it has been purchased Alta Communications -a private equity firm- from Decision Matrix LLC (who in turn acquired it from The Monitor Clipper Group?).  The story on InformationWeek is (marginally) more informative than the press release posted as such on Tekrati.  Our prediction for more consolidation in 2005 is confirmed.


• David Rossiter reports another defection from Yankee in the person of Euan Davis but to Forrester services team this time: [Analyst Insight:] Arrival at Forrester.


• Joe Guralnick is asking what the Borg CEO is up to: read [Gartner Watch:] Does Gene Hall has a future

    

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.

Is Gartner going Symposium frenzy? Part 1/2

Starting with the good news, the event production team as usual did a top job (those guys can really run a large show neatly) and the James Bond party at the Carlton hotel was impressive, with its ice scultpted artefacts, a casino room and even oysters… Quite an improvement over previous years, although some say Florence was still the nicest one. We wonder how the Orlando do was in comparison? Miller Lite, chicken wings and Mickey Mouse till 7:30 pm? Just in case you were wondering where your platinum sponsorship package went, we scientifically guesstimated the party budget to $200+ a head (.2 probability).

The estimate we have on attendees numbers vary (we won’t get the final numbers until the event sales team has finished massaging them) between 3500 and 4000, which seems down at lest 500 on last year -a similar in proportion as for the Orlando event. About 60% of those are users (in Europe at least). The unfortunate choice of dates (November 11th is a bank holiday in France and most like to be home early on Fridays) might be one of the causes explaining this audience drop. We also think budgets are tights and events drag less attendee nowadays.

Going on about numbers, we heard some vendors commenting on the number of events: in Europe, Gartner will hold a spring and a fall Symposium, the new Data Centre Conference that will take place in Amsterdam in 2 weeks and other specialists events. Would that symposium frenzy be a good illustration of the law of diminishing returns? This would mean a logic of more events, less attendees for each and decreased ROI for sponsors. BTW, that gala party was quite useful to pickup the exhibitors’ mood (those rich enough to buy stands and vendor sessions) which was quite bleak. After a few glasses of Moet champaign, most of them confessed on being disappointed by the poor audience showing up on the ITxpo show-floor.

As a side comment on Stephen from KGC who was probably high when he accused Gartner to have moved the Symposium dates to kill KGC’s event (read Gartner Disconnects KCG Connects). We agree with SGV that they had to cancel either due to low audience or careless planning this on a Sunday. Or both. But that business of blaming Gartner for having to cancel, even if they’re now becoming a monopoly… tsss…. Side note two: the reason for starting on a Tuesday was that the Palais des Festivals was booked till the WE, which also had a knock-on effect on the show-floor build –ITxpo was not accessible during Tuesday’s lunch.

Bottom line: we recommend vendors to use this year's Symposium shortfalls to negotiate a rebate for 2006.

To be continued tomorrow...

Strategically monopolistic

Joe (Guralnick) seems to have woken up this week, as he did commit quite a few Gartner Watch posts. In Good debate on price hikes he relates a discussion with Fred Abott from Valley View Ventures on whether Gartner is a monopoly who has freedom to push its prices up. Fred seems to think Gartner is up for sale. ARmadgeddon’s long stated opinion is that Gartner is indeed increasing prices (see (Distant) Echoes from the Barcelona Symposium) and that, while we agree with Fred that their competition is diverse and morphing, Gartner with about 40-50% share is behaving as a natural monopoly. For more on this subject, see Gartner, a natural monopoly (Analyst Equity and Gartner Watch and also Revealed: why Gartner took over META!!!.
Tipping in some more kerosene, Silicon Valley Guy tipped us with the following: “In the October 27th Q3FY05 earnings call, Gartner CEO Gene Hall told the Wall Street analysts that on November 1, Gartner will be doing an across-the-board price increase of 3% to 5%.”

SVG also wrote us about the new industries research & advisory services, which he presents as a “new premium fee-based research services from its core research offering as well as the old GartnerG2 and META standard research. So what use to be included in the core syndicated research, now people have to pay additional to obtain. The premium services run from $25k to $35k. What is really outrageous is that to get access to the Industries services, a client also has to have core research seat, so the real price of Industries access is $35k to $55k depending on your discount for a core Advisory Seat.”
The information we have received so far is that the Industries RAS will be separate deliverables though very similar in form but more business issues focused. However SVG points out an interesting “improvement” over G2: the inclusion of tragic magic quadrants and Marketscopes (a dumbed down version with just a 1 to 5 rating) which of course should prompt vendors to subscribe to get what is said on them and buy reprints. We’ll reserve our judgment on Gartner Industries but based on initial conversations our expectations are low.

The logical outcome of monopolistic position is usually arrogance and fall. Research is commoditizing and Gartner has to make it more relevant to IT buyers. Unfortunately we doubt of their ability to move up the value chain to compete with BCG, system integrators and others. Finally, we know their consulting business is not getting traction (see Gartner ≠ Consulting?).
With all this in mind, it would be nice to get an update on Gartner’s strategy but it is interesting to note that the Borg hasn’t bothered to organise a meeting for the AR profession during the Cannes Symposium…

Back in the high life again?

Stephen England's just written his balance sheet of Gartner's Symposium. His verdict: "Last week saw a significant milestone for the tech industry – the return of one of the most reliable bellwethers in the business -- Gartner’s annual Fall Symposium -- to the state it was in before the bubble popping tech crash and the dreadful events of September 11th 2001."

Okay, with a name like ARmadgeddon no-one expects this blog to be optimisitic. But we think Stephen has sniffed one yellow rose too many. He comments that "8,500 people attended the Orlando event (netting out 1,000 odd vendor attendees and a similar number of Gartner team members that’s 6,500 end user technology buyers or ETB’s)." That is a long way short of where Symposium was in 2000, when the conference center was packed solid. I seem to remember being told that there were well over 10,000 there that year.

But Stephen's estimate of the attendance this year also seems a little high to me. 6,500 attendees from end user organizations is 50% higher than the figure Gartner cited in the 'come back soon' packet given to departing firms that had exhibited at Orlando: and not all of those end users are end user buyers. Every year the ITxpo is filled with an increasing percentage of human locusts who seem to be there only for free pens, t-shirts and chicken wings. Indeed, his estimate of Gartner having 40% market share also seems high. My Gartner account manager claimed a much lower percentage.

Of course, since Stephen's biggest asset is a former Gartner analyst, it figures that he and his colleagues want to emphasise Gartner's leadership. But the reality is that Gartner's revenue is smaller now than it was at the peak of the boom; and that is remarkable considering that Gartner acquired META Group.

And that leads us to a rather different conclusion from Stephen: that Gartner's market share is probably lower than at the peak of the boom, and attendance at Symposium seems unlikely to return to the peak before the crash. Indeed, Gartner's recent choices, such as those to sell its custom research wing and to effectively cancel the first full day of the Symposium in Cannes, are signals that it expects hard times ahead.

Symposium Blog

Whether visiting the Gartner Symposium or not, make sure to have a look at the Symposium Blog. The analysis there is pretty dismal (looks like Dell and Microsoft purchased a sponsorship package), but you’ll find menus (we’re looking forward to the food in Cannes :-) and why Disney places toilets strategically. Oh, and yes it’s a moderated blog…

Gartner Disconnects KCG Connects

Last month I mentioned how Bill, wearing a Texan flag, hosted a day of discussion for analyst relations professionals attending Symposium in Florida. Gartner's CEO, Gene Hall, was the guest speaker - and did not have the best day of his life there. I've just heard that, thanks to Gartner, the KCG Connects event at the Symposium in Cannes has just been canceled.

KCG says that Gartner has suddenly moved the first full day to Tuesday from Monday, meaning that many people are delaying their arrival, and that a falling number of sign ups for their Sunday event makes it unprofitable for them to fly over to France.

We have to admit that even though it sounds very unlikely that a whole day of the conference was junked at the last minute, we don't think KCG could be making this up. Of course, Symposium always opens with an half day -- for registration and tutorials. And as far as we can see, the tutorial day in Cannes was always scheduled to be the Monday [in contrast, it was the Sunday last year]. Either way, it's certainly easier blame Gartner than to suggest that most Europeans think they have better plans for Sundays.

Vinnie shoots at Forrester!

Great post from Vinnie Mirchandani on Forrester in his blog [deal architect:] Forrester's Fortitude. He describes them as bold and taking risk on analysis (i.e. headline research). The SAP case (stock fell 10%) is scary.

What impact has Forrester on European AR professionals?
Headline research, or bold claims with little substanciation, is difficult to deal with for AR people, as getting a retractation from an analyst is difficult. That is unless of course the relationship with the analyst is good and makes him/her more predictable. On the the other hand, Forrester's presence in Europe is far from what it should be (they don't cover hardware for instance).

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.

Techra and cousins: pot noodles for AR dinners

We (and about everyone else it seems) got pinged by Jim Zimmermann from Techra, a new venture he founded after creating and selling Analyst Views to Bitpipe (subsequently assimilated by TechTarget and then resold to Northern Light -do you still follow the plot?).

Both sites are pretty similar, and if one add Tekrati the market is quite crowded. All those aim to aggregate analyst content and make it easier for AR managers to trawl through research (probably the most exciting part of AR?), while offering analyst firms directory. They differentiate on the added value services: Tekrati offers an analyst profiles database while Techra and Analyst view create "consensus reports" amalgamating the opinion of several analysts in document.

Our opinion is that they all help AR newbies by providing directories and ready made information -quite useful for briefing books or to know who to brief. Established AR practices within large firms will often be better resourced though.
The consensus reports is an interesting option to create a report compare and contrast the opinions of the various firms on a given subject for $25k (or 12-18k for a brief).

Gartner ≠ Consulting ?

ARpro posted earlier on Gartner selling their custom research department: Gartner exits Custom Research ?!? Some more thoughts on this: as we mentioned earlier (Resistance is futile, All resistance is futile, Germany, Gartner, a natural monopoly), the Borg already killed META Group Consulting (MGC). We also heard at the KGC Connect sessions in Orlando (a nice AR gathering at $500 a pop!) that Bill thinks Gene Hall is planning to spin off the consulting business within 6-9 months.

Killing the golden goose?

This move is quite surprising as MGC was boasting a double digit growth and a good utilisation rate and we'd love to hear what the securities analysts are saying about Gartner's strategy.
Conversely, it seems like a nice opportunity for IDC and META’s illegitimate offspring but also independent analysts if ever they can coalesce to balance the market or turn open-source.

What’s the Borg strategy then?

Well, so it seems determined to keep the prices high at the risk of alienating key vendors, keep making good money from their events business. Would this mean a deliberate attempt to curb the influence of vendors? If that was the case, they plan may be to increase the perceived independence and therefore justifying the premium they can charge? Will the market accept that high-integrity means high-value?

Just don't take their fashion tips

It's the first day of Gartner's Symposium today. Having unpacked my bags here at DisneyWorld, I picked my way through the crowds of little Snow Whites and Peter Pans to the Coronado's convention center, where Bill and his group were organising a networking event for almost 60 seasoned [over-seasoned?] analyst relations professionals.

Those of us who love Bill know that he has a lot to share. So, it was a bit of surprise to be at an event where he let other people do the talking: AR pro's and people from the analyst companies. It was a great day.

Needless to say, Bill still found a way to make an impact by dressing Stephen, Chris, Niwas and himself in these matching shirts made of the Texan flag.

Let's hope they have enough to wear them for the whole week. It will certainly brighten the week up!

Reacting to an analyst attack

Interesting points from Duncan on How to react to negative reports: [Analyst Equity] “When analysts attack”.

We’d add two points to his analysis:

1. Vendors need not to over-react to negative reports; it has often unwanted consequences like the analysts sniffing a sweet-spot.


2. A fair criticism is often not a bad thing, as it positions the research note as truly independent. If you want marketing brochures, write them yourselves.

He however assumes one’s always dealing with rational, unbiased and honest analysts. Quite unfortunately, this is not always the case, as we’ve seen analysts verging on the sanity engage in passionate and irrational arguments with vendors for the sake of having an intellectual contest.
We believe those are actually a small minority, but most vendors quite rightly do not react well to this treatment. Seeing an analyst spitting out a competitor’s FUD year after year probably also falls into this category.
In those extreme cases, we suggest escalating to management level, to cut funding (at least temporarily) and ignore deliberately the analyst for a while…

Gartner exits Custom Research ?!?

Now it gets interesting. Duncan has pointed out that Gartner has sold its Custom Research business.

My first thought was: how come research is no longer a core competency for research companies. It's not like Gartner needs the money, is it?

But then I started wondering about the money side. The sale involves an eight year outsourcing contract from Gartner to keep on running the IT panel surveys. So this makes GCR a really valuable asset.

I'll leave Joe to run the numbers, but I can't see how this works out to be good news for Gartner. Gartner is stepping out of customer research just at the time when Forrester is moving into it (if I am to believe my account manager there). And it's giving a guaranteed income, against which it can borrow, to an upstart analyst firm that intends to buy other analyst firms, more than double in size, and becomne a full-service analyst firm.

It's just really, really strange.

SPAR, not Spas, in Orlando

In a few days the AR community will be gathering in Orlando for Gartner's Symposium. Of course, all our colleagues think we have a week of pampered fun in our DisneyWorld resort. Sadly we are all too busy to take advantage of the hotel spa. Our only trip to the Magic Kingdom will be to bring back lost executives.

So while there's no spa time, there will be SPAR time. Those of us in the Valley who want to establish a society for professional analyst relations people are hoping to expand our support on our annual pilgrimage to the Atlantic. For those of you who haven't read earlier posts on this topic, the plan is NOT that we combine to pressurize the analyst houses. Instead, we want to network, develop professionally and promote analyst relations as a real profession. There's some flexibility: not only vendors, but also external service providers like freelancers and PR agencies and those who are in-between jobs.

Progress has been slow. Out of nine action items from the first SPAR meeting, nothing happened on most of them, because no-one had the time to volunteer: Everyone is really busy. The majority of us have corporate managers to deal with, and that limits our spare time. A few external service providers really have time and energy to support something like SPAR -- Tom, Bill, Duncan and Barbara -- but they are excluded for some rather spurious reasons (but they'll be hanging around at the edges, and Duncan is even flying over from London).

At Symposium we'll be seeing what progress has been made, and discussing how we can communicate outside meetings with blogs, online communities, LinkedIn, newsletters and so on -- especially because AR is a big global community, and not everyone can come to a central location.

In November, we'll have a meeting (probably at SAP) which will have a lot to review: charters, goals, structure, some common projects like a survey and directory -- and a series of how-to discussions on case studies. It's a busy agenda, so I remain a little unsure about whether we have enought support yet to make everything happen. However, it's certainly a move in the right direction.

[Analyst insight]: John Collin's blog

David (Rossiter from Sunesis) points to Jon Collin’s blog: The Days Are Just Packed. We learn the interesting things on the drudgery analyst life, but to the difference of ranting Andy (Bitterer, not to be confused with randy Andy or even with Andy Butler), this is with a good dose of English humour. A most needed quality indeed, as we learn of the London mishaps, the gazpacho and thumb incident and bumper episode …
We also learn he’s writing book on Rush and it all makes up for an entertaining read in the end…

While we hope John will keep posting frequently, the departure of Dale Vile from Quocirca may keep him busy on other fronts?

Hiring Gartner analysts to increase business intelligence?

From an Onymous reader: Hyperion Hires Former Gartner VP As Chief Strategy Officer. This business intelligence software company hired Howard Dresner, ex Gartner Research Fellows (now only 12 left...) and "led the formation of Gartner's business intelligence research practice". Hyperion must have liked what they got from Gartner: a happy soon-ex-customer?

Who will be next to gain from the brain drain?

Microsoft hires from Gartner, right, left and centre!

We don’t know if it’s a policy or a trend, but several Borg analysts have defected for the software giant: Earl Perkins (ex-META, security research?), Ashim Pal (ditto and to do AR) and Michael Haines (Americas channel strategy).
ARmadgeddon wishes them good luck: advising is often easier than doing…

Devious minds would suggest that MSFT’s position in the Magic Quadrants is going to improve.  On the other side, they are still using several PR agencies to execute their AR tactics, not getting a lot of kudos from the analysts anyhow…

Gartner hires new SVP

Tip from Sillicon Valley Guy:  Gartner submitted a SEC form 4 granting options to a new officer, Kendall Davis, SVP of Strategy, Marketing & Business Development. No press release and Davis not listed on the management page yet...

Gobernator attack: redux

Looks like the hunting season has started and the Redmonks are after the Borg:
A Gartner Analyst walks into a bar...

The post is about Gartner making bold statements (like "UNIX is dead") and "fall into the trap of binary thinking".

James, like many other bloggers, think conversation will outflank conventional anlayst firms:
Governor attack! (check the comments) Alike the JBoss model against the IBM/Microsoft one?

Tekrati announces Gartner Datacentre conference

Tekrati nicely reworked Gartner’s press release to make it readable: Gartner Plans Annual European Data Center Summit 2005. However, this is not the first DataCentre Conference –the Borg ran one a few years in London back and dropped it after sponsor complained that audiences did not meet expectations. The conference will be fronted by Tom Bittman, Andy Butler, Brian Gammage and some other 9 BorgMembers.  On a related topic, we hear a star German datacenter analyst has parted with Gartner but have not yet received confirmations of his destination. Andy may know?

Note to PR agencies: stop spamming analysts! (and just everyone else)

What's wrong with all those PR folks? Is it just because they think they "own" the messages (note the differences with "understanding"), that they feel authorised to send alerts to just about everyone, follow-up with a release, a pitch, etc, etc, etc...?

Here's a wake-up call from Borg-Andy Bitterer (as ex-META Group, he's got an excuse though), in case previous posts (Analysts say tech waffle is 'most frustrating') doe not make the point clearly enough: [bit blue blog;] This is Ground Control to PR Tom

Governor attack!

Redmonk’s James Governor launches at the big ones: in this post (Why Forrester isn't part of the conversation. Its like NY Times Select) he describes why you need to be in the open to start the conversation. And in this one (How Gartner competes with IBM. we all do?) he assesses how the Borg is threatened by open source analysis, such as Wiki and blogs.

The issue for Gartner and Forrester is that he’s right: even if BigCorp, Inc will probably always spend some bucks with the Borg and others to cover their asses (analysts are quite open to the fact they’re often engaged to give their advice on a purchasing decision a posteriori just to justify the budget before their CIO or board), we think that the days of the subscription model are counted. The first victims will be door stoppers retailers such as the poor Butler guys, unless they can recoup the drop in subscriptions with their events business.

This said, the economic model for open source analysis is still challenging…

Murphy's PR Hype Cycle

Analysts get a pleasing name-check on the PR Hype Cycle. This is the invention of our Tom Murphy, who writes PR Opinions when he's not collecting frequent flyer points jetting between here and his home in Dublin.

This is an entertaining diagram, but it gives us a couple of thoughts - not only about Tom's chart but also about the Hype Cycle in general.

It's very interesting that Visibility is Gartner's axis, alongside time. The more I look at Hype Cycles, I am sure that the results are totally subjective. Looking at the Time axis, for example, items tend to be charted neither in the order of their invention, nor of their arrival on the 'Plateau' but rather their mainstream acceptance by mature market players. For example, email is way more visible than VNR.

Nor, indeed, are items in the 'Peak of Inflated Expectations' necessarily over-inflated. Gartner says that RFID and smartphones are there at the moment, but both those technologies are delivering a lot of value to the agressive early adoptors that use them.

However, looking at a few other Hype Cycles, we've also noticed a great feature, which is the indication of how long something will take to each maturity, if at all. Some things on Gartner's Hype Cycles just drop down dead, the way that fax has.

Insystek buys Gartner's independence

The more I tell people I don't want dessert, the more I want it. Am I the only person who feels like that? Maybe not -- because Gartner seems to have the same contradiction.

The more Gartner talks about its independence and rigor, the more its people on the ground are love-hate bombing us -- telling us that good things happen to those pay their way.

Informally, they suggest that Gartner will be half-way to being a channel partner. Only now it seems it's formal.

On Insystek's home page they are highlighting their major business partners: along side the usual suspects like Microsoft and LANware is Gartner!

Try to imagine how all of Insystek's competitors are speaking about Gartner right now... then double it. The account manager at Gartner must have gotten a very sweet upside from Insystek to make outrage worthwhile.

P.S. It look five days, but Gartner got Insystek to full the listing on September 28. Score one for Team ARmadgeddon. To see how Gartner was presented, check out Google's cache.

AR manager in search of automated reporting

James Governor quotes some IBM bloggers in this post: On IBM AR, "I dream of a world of standard reporting", and death of the analyst business.  One of the IBMer blogging mentions automated reporting.

We suspect James and that AR bloggette may not be speaking the same language: one of the chores of AR managers and agencies is reporting. In PR agencies, they call it clippings because they usually employ slave-labour to clip all the press articles that the PR agencies will claim as results of their activities.

In this post (Measuring Analyst Relations) we argue that most AR teams are measured based on clippings, hence the reporting issue mentioned above.

Solving this issue is tricky, as most services do no offer tonality analysis, other than through human readers.  As the Kensington Group (anyone seen Norma lately?) experience shows (they went bust), the costs involved are such that it does not make a sustainable economic model.  That’s why AR managers spend their time collating reports and marking them positive, neutral or negative.  This is a bad method of reporting for at least two reasons: it automatically leads to self-selecting samples and self-evaluation bias.

EMEA analysts: loving but cynical

Duncan has a nice post (Four Rules for Global AR) on doing AR in EMEA: it is too often that US based corporations forget their business is influenced predominantly by local analysts.

EMEA analysts tend to have a broader coverage are (like hardware vs. UNIX low-end servers) and are most of the time more cynical (Duncan says “candid” but I suspect he’s trying to be polite) and can be edgy to deal with for execs not used to British or German humour.

However, because they are cross-topic and no-nonsensical, they can present an invaluable outside opinion on strategy and messages and should be considered for WW product launches pre-briefings.

Models of the AR process

I've just re-discovered a cool chart that Bill Hopkins put together for the AIIM Advisory Trade Members meeting in Phoenix earlier this year. Bill's presentation outlines the eight steps for a successful AR program:

1. Target the right analysts
2. Establish the right partnerships
3. Build a contact strategy and plan
4. Nominate an interactor team
5. Arm them with the best presentations
6. Train them in analyst interactions
7. Integrate AR with the sales force
8. Measure the results of the program.

These are okay, but they focus on how to start up an interaction program with analysts. More is required to start-up and maintain AR. So a number of questions remain unaddressed:

• How do you get buy-in to AR in the first place?
• What goals can be 'sold' to executives in order to get resources for AR?
• Is there more to AR than telephone and face-to-face interactions -- what about newsletters and extranets?
• Is there more to integration than connecting to sales - what about marketing, PR, competitive intelligence and senior executives?
• How can you get the most benefit from your relationships with analysts?

Perhaps these are questions that don't concern many of Bill's clients. Serving 700 organizations (according to his website; over 800 according to the slides) must mean that most of his business is with mid-sized firms. He's explicit that he isn't doing in-depth consulting with most of them. It did seem to be that these are questions that SageCircle addresses before it went bust, and I am hopeful that we'll start to dig deep on some of those questions as SPAR gets going.

A lot has been happening with SPAR recently. Most of you outside the Bay area won't know what we're doing, so I'll make another post about that next week.

Microsoft AR plays Darth Vader at Linux love-in

We've clearly been slacking over the summer, because we missed this bizarre clipping.

At the leading Linux conference, Google look on Microsoft in a technology quiz. The report states: "Microsoft led by Analyst Relations Specialist Rob Curran, wore a full Darth Vader suit, while the others donned Stormtrooper costumes."

Rob, by the way, doesn't actually work for Microsoft but for one of its public relations agencies, Waggener Edstrom, who seem to be looking for new AR staff. The view from this cubicle is that Rob probably got promoted. Microsoft will have been delighted to have its representatives linking its brand to the epitome of evil.

With bright thinking like this around, maybe we should rethink our Underperform rating on PR agencies? Or maybe not...

Analysts say tech waffle is 'most frustrating'

Analysts say tech waffle is 'most frustrating', according to the new AR division of Rainier PR, an agency in England. Its research reports that EMEA analysts feel that AR by PR agencies with with an AR division is better than AR from a PR firm without one. However, our first reaction is cautious: after all, they would say that, wouldn't they?

Regular readers of this blog know that our stance is that almost all PR agencies stink at AR: we have met them all, and just don't feel comfortable using them. While many PR firms do claim to have AR divisions, we've always Googled these guys when we've come across them. Most of them seem to be full-time PR people with an extra set of business cards.

Needless to say, our stance touches a raw nerve especially amongst AR people in the PR world, like Duncan, who previously worked for Brodeur. A terse little email from him tells us "It's totally counterproductive to focus your fire on PR agencies that are trying to make analyst relations better. There aren't many AR people, in-house on in agencies, that will take the time to ask analysts what they really want. Our surveys of analysts show that even major vendors, with mature AR outreach, aren't giving analysts what they need".

It seems to us that this is partly right, but we still think it's Duncan who's missing the point. Most PR agencies think that AR means organizing briefings. Period. That's what the research that we mentioned earlier focused on, to the exclusion of anything else. It's certainly a step forward for PR agencies to understand that briefings should be better, but it doesn't help them to wise up to a broader view. Research like this encourages people to focus more on the briefing, and less on how to build and leverage a relationship with analysts. Rather than making the annual corporate road trip a little better, why not try to break the cycle of briefing and silence that seems so very comfortable for both PR agencies and executives?

Evalubase falls out with XMG

Following on from our post about XMG, a depressingly amusing war of words has opened up on Analyst Equity about former META analyst Doug Laney's working arrangements.

Duncan's post lists Laney as a XMG analyst, even though he is also listed as an analyst at Evalubase. In start-up firms like this, it's smart to work for two firms -- but perhaps Evalubase and XMG didn't both know, since Doug, XMG and Andy Bitterer are been slugging it out on the comments page. According to Doug, he isn't part of the XMG team. That's news to XMG.

Since even Andy seems to hold down a second job, as a mystery shopper for KLM, I don't see what the problem is.

Gartner's Copyright and Quote Policy: it's just stupid

Gartner's so-called copyright policies shouldn't fool anyone: the firm is claiming rights that is it not granted by copyright laws.

The firm states "To use the "Gartner" name, take excerpts of Gartner research or quote Gartner analysts, a usage request must be submitted in writing to Gartner Vendor Relations for approval." Clearly, even Gartner can't believe that is has any legal right to prevent people from using the word "Gartner". The firm would clearly be overwhelmed if everyone did do.

Nevertheless, it states "Gartner reserves the right to impose quote bans of varying durations, including a ban on all use of the Gartner name." Perhaps some companies have contractual obligations with Gartner not to refer to that firm with its permission; we doubt that Gartner could make such a claim hold up in court.

Underpinning this bombastic intimidation is a reasonable desire: Gartner only wants recent quotes to be used, and used in context.

However, its policies give vendors a difficult choice:

• Either they work within Gartner's quote request process, which makes them give up a whole range of legal freedoms in exchange for nothing.
• Or they work outside the quote request process (or get legally independent entities like PR agencies to do so) which will chill the relationship with the office of the ombudsman but will leave them with all the normal legal rights to quote from copyright materials which intellectual freedom and scientific progress rests on.

Has anyone heard of Gartner getting legal with firms that didn't follow the quote policy?

Another META offshoot

Reported in Analyst Equity: after Meton Group in Germany (forced by the Borg to rename as Experton and cancel their conference), another analyst outfit, XMG, has been founded on the remains of META Group after it was wiped out by the Borg competitive wipe-out and META Group Consulting was disbanded. The eXMetaGroup includes William Carlson, Edan Puritt, Sylvia Stolk, Eugene Talasch, Lauro Vives and Michael Zammit.

Good luck to them…

Does scale matter?

Interesting comments from James at Redmonk on our post from yesterday: Redmonk and the open source analysts.  

Indeed, does scale matter?  We would not dispute that Redmonk those two nice lads in a niche are doing well -a refreshing piece of news in the analyst landscape.  But is this model replicable or scalable to balance the frantically assimilating and aggressive Borg dominance?  Some, like Bloor, seem to think aggregation will help -we Just don’t know yet.  Nice plan though…

Note to James:

• by replicable, we mean other firms’ ability to emulate the model


• as for size is concerned, we would define it by number of “employees” (ideally while maintaining the revenue per head ratio)

Redmonk and the open source analysts

Interesting Q&A from Redmonk's Steven O'Grady (Open Source, Meet RedMonk. RedMonk, Meet Open Source) following his associate's maxi-manifesto (Things To Do in the Analyst Business When You Are Dead). James and Steven are two very nice chaps but it's still unclear whether their model is scalable and profitable...

Read also our previous post: Open source analyst business model?

Playing the surveys game

It is always tempting the feed the journos with a good survey, especially if it comes from a "reputable source", such as analysts for instance. If you fancy chasing ambulances, check this one from Aberdeen for Planview.

Of course, you don't have to be Aberdeen to deliver the number wanted:

• it's quite easy to use a self-selecting sample,
• manipulate the assumptions
• or do both

Not that we're picking on a vendor in particular, Microsoft is not by far not the only vendor incriminated -it's just their GTF page is helping a great deal finding examples!

Spin Bunny, the (great and notorious) PR blog, has a good one on why PR agencies like doing this:
Spin Bunny: Surveying PR surveys

AR 101 series: Analyst vs. press (Analyst Insight)

In the Analyst Relations 101 for newbies and useful reminders for others, by David Rossiter @ Analyst Insight:
Analysts v Press…Understanding the Difference

In a nutshell, reporters are paid to increase the readership/circulation of their paper/newsfeed/ broadcasting service, and thus seek headlines and soundbites which can be newsworthy.

Analysts are paid to help making sense of what vendors try to sell to users and therefore to help the latter ones in their procurement decisions.

The question is "why then so many vendors treat analysts like press?", even we're in 2005 and AR is now mainstream and better understood?

In this previous post (AR 101: Measuring Analyst Relations) we argue that when AR is measured on raw clippings and quotes, it does deliver only a very small part of its potential. As a matter of fact, concentrating on getting analyst for hire to publish on new product announcements does little to help creating a positive external business environment, let alone making sure that key analysts influencing sales are properly looked after.

Kensington goes offline?

I hate bookmarks in my browser, so I loved Kensington Group's listing of analyst websites. But I've had a shock this morning... no kensingtongroup.com.

Does anyone know if there's a similar listing -- bigger than the Tekrati one? And does anyone know what's happening at Kensington: is it a web problem or are they closed?

Helzerman.com: interview with an odd Gabriel

The big blue AR blogette Catherine Helzesomehting has interviewed Dan Olds from Gabriel Consulting, a small US (mostly) vendor facing analyst firm. It’s quite sweet and worth a read!

There are some gems in this interview:

• Being an analyst involves work: when asked for his advice for newcomers, Dan's response was that “I personally believe that everyone should get out of this business as soon as possible”. He seems to find tough “selling to strangers” and that he “also have to actually do the work”. Really?


• He seems lonely, as he goes on suggesting AR professionals to “Give me flowers for no special reason.”


• There’s a real interesting vendor horror story, involving vendors posing as a research firm, legal threats, bullying, cancelling briefings at virtually no-notice, etc… Could it be the same vendor as this one? This section alone is enough to read the interview and save itin your “what not to do” file.


• For AR beginners, check the “pay for play” question too.


• Finally, it’s worth noting what he expects from events: access to execs and techies. We’ve heard this so often that it’s probably worth engraving above your cube.

helzerman.com : Interview with Dan Olds, Gabriel Consulting Group

Have you seen my plan, my plan, my plan?

Looks like Justin's done it again with Duncan Chapple: "The cunning plan of Bloor Research".

For those he has not visited yet, here's the elevator pitch that will avoid you the meeting:

• Bloor has been founded by, well Robin Bloor (after falling out with ex-associate Martin Butler that is)
• He moved to Austin (Texas that is) to work with Carol Baroudi (author of Internet for Dummies), hence Baroudi-Bloor
• They then went trio with Judith into Hurwitz
• Robin is no longer active with Bloor, since Justin took over and brought his mates -even though there are persisent rumours of sightings at the Magic Circle

So here's a quick rundown of Justin's grand plan:

1. Spin off IT-Director + IT-Analysis and open them as a publishing tool to other firms
2. Open source their research, or parts of it
3. Help users with selection with a venture quite alike yellow pages for the IT world
4. Sell vendors with "market access" products (aka analyst for hire, which is what they mainly sell today in their spare while not mending the relationship with Oracle)

We will watch this space with great interest, and in particular on the "ability to execute". "Completeness of vision" is... grand, in particular the collaborative aspect of open sourcing methodologies to the independent analysts community. We like the fact it enables them to collaborate on frameworks while playing on individual strenghts to compete for projects.

If that plan succeeds it would be a calming force against the ever greedy Borg. (Even if money was no object, Bloor is still way easier to deal with.)