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New telecoms specialist at Freeform Dynamics

Dale Vile's just confirmed that Freeform Dynamics has appointed an analyst to take responsibility for the telecoms service provider market. 

Josie Sephton, who starts on 2 June, is a principal analyst. She will cover telecoms solutions and services in the enterprise and SMB sectors.

Until recently Josie was a consultant with Ovum. She spent 12 years there before leaving in January 2008.

Dale will work alongside Josie on enterprise mobility while Jon Collins and Tony Lock will work with her when the service provider domain meets enterprise networking. Dale says: "The lines will be deliberately fuzzy, though, as they are in the industry in general."

You can read what else Dale has to say on Josie on the Freeform Dynamics' blog.  

Ovum telecoms chief to leave

It’s all change at the top of Ovum’s telecoms team.

Earlier this week, Chris Lewis, senior vice president (SVP) of telecoms research, announced that he was leaving the company.

He joins a number of other senior analysts who have moved on recently or will be leaving shortly.

Martin Garner, head of wireless and mobile research, is setting up his own firm but will continue to work for Ovum on a freelance basis.

Mike Cansfield, head of fixed telecoms research, is joining Forrester Research.

Other departures from the telecoms team include Marta Muñoz Méndez-Villamil, Annelise Berendt, John Delaney and Jonathan Arbor.

In an email exchange last week (about an earlier draft of this post), Rosemary Masterson, Ovum’s operations director, was able to provide some thoughts from Mark Meek, the new Datamonitor CEO and managing director of Ovum.

“Ovum provides a high quality syndicated offering which is based on highly collaborative teams, not just individuals. We are continuing to recruit for people in both research and consulting who want to be part of a dynamic commercially focused team.”

The company has decided to promote internally to replace Chris, Martin and Mike.

Brett Azuma is replacing Chris as SVP. He will also maintain his current role as head of the carrier networks & technology practice.

Based in the US, Brett doesn’t have a very high profile in Europe. However, he has over 20 years industry experience and was previously chief analyst for telecommunications at Gartner.

Reporting to Brett will be four practice heads:

Jeremy Green takes over mobile strategy while Jan Dawson picks up fixed telecom strategy.

Richard Mahony and Michael Philpott continue to run the enterprise and consumer teams respectively.

Ovum is also hiring externally. Jonathan Doran is joining the consumer team. He’s currently a senior analyst at Yankee Group where he covers broadband access and service strategies for the consumer market. There are more “senior” hires in the pipeline.

As you’d expect, Mark is bullish about Ovum’s future prospects: “Last week, I set out my vision for a business whose commercial success will be driven by its people and the best-in-class content they produce for its clients. This message applies not just across Ovum but the entire Datamonitor Group.

“Post Datamonitor's acquisition of the Ovum business, there were many challenges as to be expected with the integration of two public organisations. The major elements of these have now been addressed, including putting the underlying financials of the business on track and Ovum profits and sales growth are currently tracking at historic highs.

“Moving forwards I will be focusing the attention of the management team on people retention and morale. We've had some staff turnover but there are many good people still here who want to see the Ovum business succeed.

“Datamonitor continues to invest in Ovum, rolling out its interactive content delivery platform, the Knowledge Center, which is now live with our clients, and are resolute in maintaining the respect the Ovum brand commands in the marketplace.”

Given the volume of change in such a short space of time, Ovum’s great reputation in the world of telecoms research has undoubtedly taken a hit. Many of the departing analysts are held in high regard in the market.

However, there remains a lot of good will towards Ovum and there are many who hope these changes are just a short-term blip.

It’ll be interesting to see how Brett and his team now respond. There are plenty of folk out there watching to see what happens next.

Have you entered the "Analyst of the Year" awards yet?

The Institute for Industry Analyst Relations (IIAR) is currently running the inaugural "Analyst of the Year" awards.

As an AR professional, this is your chance to choose both an 'analyst of the year' and an 'analyst firm of the year'.

There's more information - and details on how to enter - on our blog.

Top mobile analyst leaves Ovum for IDC

John Delaney, a top mobile analyst at Ovum, has resigned and will be joining IDC at the end of April.

It's a real coup for IDC. John is highly regarded and enjoys a great reputation in the mobile market.

With John heading up IDC's work in the consumer mobility market, it allows enterprise mobility guru Lars Vestergaard to focus all his energies on that market.

After all the changes in the past year or so, IDC now seems firmly set on re-asserting its position as a market leader in the mobile sector. John is joining, Jonathan Arber is already on board and we expect more appointments to be announced in the next few months. A device specialist is high on the priority list.

It also begs the question: what's happening at Ovum? Two of its consumer mobile people have now jumped ship to IDC while other telecoms analysts have moved to join vendors and operators. We hear that there's more people heading for the door.

It'll be interesting to hear what Chris Lewis, SVP for telecoms research, has to say at the IIAR meeting on Thursday this week (3 April 2008). If you'd like to come along, please get in touch with Hannah Kirkman.

Gartner has a "queue manager" for vendor briefings requests

I just spotted that Gartner has a "queue manger" in the North America and EMEA vendor briefings team.

It made me chuckle.

Ethics and independence among industry analysts

I just finished writing a post on analyst ethics and have decided it will work very nicely as my first contribution to the new blog from the IIAR (Institute of Industry Analyst Relations).

You can find the piece here.

Worth reading: New mobile analyst blog

The team over at CCS Insight has just started blogging.

Ben, Geoff and Tom have already made some interesting posts from Mobile World Congress.

IDC lures another analyst away from Ovum

Jonathan Arber has left Ovum to join IDC as a senior research analyst covering the European consumer mobile market.

Why small analysts are important

If you don't get why smaller analyst firms are important, then you should read the latest post from Dale Vile of Freeform Dynamics.

It contains a clear, well argued and powerful explanation on the value that these 'boutique' analyst companies can bring.

Do go and read the whole piece. There's a lot more to it than I'm able to share here:

On Commercial Impact
"The earlier in the decision making cycle you can engage, the more chance you stand of closing a deal...This kind of ‘upstream’ shaping of mindsets, thinking and objectives...is influenced by a whole range of inputs...Many boutiques play predominantly in the upstream space, with hard hitting blogs, far reaching media relationships, and deep community ties into various buyer communities and constituencies."

On Market Insight
"The other reason quite a few boutiques tend to be entertained and promoted by in-house AR people is the value their executives and other spokespeople get from a different kind of dialogue. The average level of ‘been there, done that’ experience and general level of talent within smaller firms tends to be higher than in larger ones, and analysts are far less constrained in the way they interact."

Gartner and the Institute of Industry Analyst Relations

I know. Two posts in a day.

Still, I wanted to blog about the great IIAR (Institute of Industry Analyst Relations) meeting yesterday (hosted by CA, thanks very much Geoff Dorrington).

Aaron Yaverski (GVP High Tech Provider Product Management) and Andrew Rosenblatt (Product Development) from Gartner came in to discuss some of its plans for the "Gartner for AR" product.

It was a very interesting conversation - and "it was very encouraging to see Aaron and Andrew proactively soliciting views and opinions from the European AR community on what we would like to see in the future."

I stole that line from a post written by Ludovic Leforestier at the new IIAR blog. You should pop over there and read it in full.

I'd echo his closing comments: "I’d encourage you to share your views and thoughts with Gartner - either by commenting on this blog or talking to Gartner directly. It looks like there are going to be some good and interesting developments happening later in the year. Now is our chance to make sure our voices are being heard."

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FYI, I am a board member of the IIAR

Analyst asks "Is it just me, or is webcasting completely useless?"

Dean Bubley of Disruptive Analysis explains his problem here.

So, think about Dean's advice when you're planning a briefing with him: "The old way works better - either email a PDF/PPT, or a link to download it. Then use a normal phone call or audio webcast."

Some AR blogs I have been reading recently

A few new AR blogs have appeared in recent months. I've added them to my blog roll (over there, on the right) but wanted to highlight some that I find interesting.

The first is by Dale Vile, MD of Freeform Dynamics. Open Reasoning is "a vehicle to provide insight and commentary on the workings of the industry analyst community, particularly the community of smaller players in the market that live alongside the large global firms such as Gartner, Forrester, IDC, etc."

Another comes from SageCircle (recently relaunched by Carter Lusher and Dave Eckert). Their views are well worth a read and can be found on the SageCircle blog.

Until recently, Carter was head of AR for HP. Its corporate AR blog (which he set up) has some gems.

Bradshaw leaves Ovum for IDC

Bloor on Analyst Relations

Robin Bloor has begun a series of blog posts called 'Analyst Relations: Dealing with Analysts'.

The series is pitched as providing "advice to technology vendors on how to become more effective in their relationships with analysts." Alternatively, Robin describes it as "a campaign to make my job easier."

I always find it interesting to see what analysts have to say on the subject of AR and Robin speaks a lot of sense. Any experienced AR professional worth their salary will find little new in what Robin says but he articulates the fundamentals in a very clear and easy to read way.

For beginners to AR (and for the many, many PR folk who really don't get the industry analysts or understand how to work with them), Robin's series should be required reading.

There are two posts so far (links below). I am looking forward to seeing more.

The Pre-Briefing

AR or PR

PS - I also found The IT Analyst Gallery on Robin's site. Very entertaining.

RedMonk - the world's first "make-side" analyst firm?

I was reading James Governor's blog earlier today (essential reading I'd suggest) and was struck by how he describes RedMonk:

"Other analyst firms primarily target sell-side or buy-side (the buyers or sellers of technology). We really don’t see the world that way. RedMonk’s core constituency is “make-side“: the makers and doers, hackers and players. They might work at vendors, at dotcoms, at service providers, or traditional enterprises. Open source and web oriented technologies are the bridges between them. Industry analysts they really need to be advocates to be effective. We are not user advocates. We’re not vendor advocates. We’re maker advocates."

James, I like it. And you have inspired me to make my first blog post of 2008.

CCS Insight attracts another top mobile analyst

Leading mobile analyst Paolo Pescatore starts today at CCS Insight as director - operator strategy, content and applications.

Paolo joins the CCS Insight team from IDC where he was research manager for the EMEA consumer wireless and mobile communications service.

Following the recruitment of Geoff Blaber earlier in the year (who has just been promoted from senior analyst to director of devices), it's another great hire for directors Mick Walker, Shaun Collins and Ben Wood.

In the past 18 months, CCS Insight has transformed itself and is now rapidly creating a brand that challenges the bigger, better-known players in the analyst space.

We've been talking to Ben recently about the reasons behind CCS Insight's success and his views on the analyst market. Sometime later this week, I'll post again on this.

Yankee hires new enterprise mobility analyst

Yankee Group's enterprise team is in hiring mode.

It's appointed Nick Spencer of Canalys; he's going to focus on enterprise mobile application environments.

There's a second hire in the works for Camille Mendler's team too. More on that soon I am told.

Another small analyst firm is expanding

UK boutique firm Macehiter Ward-Dutton (MWD) is expanding.

It has hired Angela Ashenden as a principal analyst. She was previously a senior analyst with Ovum, working in the general area of information, knowledge and content management.

At MWD, Angela will be covering collaboration, a new research area for the firm. In her first blog post, she explains:

"I will be coming at collaboration from a different perspective from most other analyst companies...taking the enterprise need as my primary consideration, rather than the technology...I will be looking at the technology in as far as how it addresses the organisation's broader business need...I aim to keep the focus on how the technology fits within and complements that structure...I'll (also) be looking at what makes collaboration work within an enterprise, and what techniques and methods you can use to implement collaborative working patterns within your organisation."

Sounds pretty much in line with the two Neil's focus on IT-Business alignment then.

It is great to see MWD expanding again - and it's part of a developing trend. In recent months, we've seen new appointments by Quocirca, Freeform Dynamics and CCS Insight (to name but a few).

There's an ever increasing recognition in the market that these smaller firms have a lot to offer.

They bring experienced analysts, sensible service offerings and a more flexible way of working (which contrasts sharply with the aggressive sales-led approach it seems some of the larger global firms are now adopting).

They have might not have the direct commercial impact on technology buyers that Gartner and Forrester can offer - but when it comes to media impact, influence within the ICT community and a willingness to engage in debate and provide insight and feedback during briefings...

Oh, and watch out for more departures from Ovum. Everytime we pick up the phone, there's another rumour of an analyst deciding that now is a good time to seek alternative employment.

Morgan Chambers acquired by EquaTerra

Action in the sourcing advisory arena today with EquaTerra's acquisition of Morgan Chambers.

You can read the press release here. The Houston Business Journal adds some additional comment.

This is big news - at least for those in the outsourcing and IT services space. Both firms are substantial players in the 'third party advisor' (TPA) market. The Black Book of Outsourcing 2007 names EquaTerra as the leading provider in the IT Outsourcing market while Morgan Chambers holds the same position in BPO.

As the two firms have different approaches to the market - EquaTerra takes an industry view while Morgan Chambers is more focused on countries - it'll be interesting to see how these are brought together. If done well, it will most likely result in a powerful approach that could easily spark further consolidation as others in the market try not to get left behind.

And there's plenty of competition around. TPI* says it is the largest sourcing advisory firm in the world (a claim not challenged by EquaTerra in the press release; instead it uses phrases like "market leading" and "advisory firm of choice").

Then think of other specialists like Everest, NeoIT and Alsbridge, the big management consultancy firms and even traditional analyst firms in the shape of Gartner Consulting, Ovum's Orbys and, increasingly, NelsonHall.

The power of the TPA has long been apparent to those AR professionals working in the IT services and outsourcing sector. In this market, they are far more important commercially than the industry analysts - although they do lack the 'rounded' influence that the typical industry analyst is capable of delivering.

(As background, there was a fascinating conversation back in late 2005 over here at ARmadgeddon on the relative importance of analysts v TPAs. Make sure to read the comments by HP's Carter and ex Gartner analyst, Vinnie!)

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* It's an interesting side-step to remember that less than two years ago, EquaTerra was planning a merger with TPI. Just a few months later, this deal was terminated by 'mutual consent'.

Hurwitz executive joins Quocirca

Fran Howarth has joined Quocirca as a principal analyst. Fran was previously a partner on the executive team at Hurwitz.

At Quocirca, she's going to be covering "emerging technologies and business models" which sounds wonderfully vague. More specifically, her areas of coverage are going to be supply chain and lifecycle management, information management, security and asset management.

Fran's appointment should give Quocirca additional coverage of some important market sectors. Sharon Crawford already covers supply chain as part of her enterprise solutions remit while Bob Tarzey has carved out a niche for himself in the IT security space alongside his core focus on 'route to market'.

The beauty of Quocirca (indeed, of many of the boutique firms) is that they deliberately set out to avoid the silo mentality practiced by some of their bigger rivals. In a market that is continually consolidating and converging (and sometimes colliding) it's always good to see an analyst firm recognise that the old divides in the ICT industry are no longer as relevant as they once were.

Quocirca's continued expansion backs up recent conversations I've had with the firm. Business is good and there's a lot of confidence about the future.

In the meantime, what does this mean for Hurwitz? The company's never had much profile over on this side of the Atlantic, choosing instead to partner with Bloor Research in the UK as a means of providing European coverage to its clients.

Fran was Hurwitz's only 'local' European analyst and we suspect she won't be replaced. Instead, we expect to see Hurwitz focus on developing its relationship with Bloor Research (especially given that Robin Bloor is a partner at Hurwitz as well as being chief research officer with Bloor).

Matt Hatton leaves Yankee Group

Farewell to Matt Hatton who covers the consumer wireless market in EMEA for Yankee Group. Today is his last day there.

He's jumping the fence and joining the mobile operator 3 UK in a market intelligence role. All the best in the new role Matt.

(We've also heard rumours that two new analysts are likely to be joining Yankee in September - one of whom is the long awaited replacement for Nick McQuire who left the enterprise team earlier this year to join BT).

IDC to speak at IIAR meeting in September

We're delighted to have IDC as our guest speaker at the IIAR (Institute of Industry Analyst Relations) meeting in September.

With Martin Hingley, (chief research officer, EMEA) and Steven Frantzen (group VP, CEMA and general manager, EMEA research) joining us, we have two senior executives coming along. I'm sure that once again, it'll be an interesting time.

The meeting is taking place on 20 September in central London.

Meetings are open to all IIAR members. We also have a limited number of guest places available.

Please do contact IIAR secretary Hannah Kirkman if you'd like to find out more. She can be reached here.

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FYI, I am a board member of the IIAR.

John Chambers of Cisco on the value of industry analysts (1.40 min video)

This short video clip is well worth watching.

John Chambers, chairman and CEO of Cisco explains why he talks to analysts - and how his reasons have changed over the past five years.

Click here to see the clip. It's embedded in the post titled "Why C-Scape?"

Cisco launches AR blog

It's great to see Cisco has started an AR blog as part of its analyst outreach. Find it here.

In the first post, Skip MacAskill - director, industry analyst relations - explains the reasons for introducing it:

"We have developed this site to interact with industry influencers and thought leaders on key industry wide trends and issues as well as Cisco-related technologies, markets and customer segments...Incorporating different media and communications tools into our AR program provides our industry analysts, customers, partners, and other interested communities the opportunity to interact and share ideas in new ways."