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

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

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

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

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

Despite garden, Oracle isn't mellowing

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

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

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

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

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

The Borg mexican army

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

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

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

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

Sageza ties in Tony

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

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

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

Want a job at Microsoft?

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

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