The IIAR is delighted to announce the winners of this year’s IIAR Analyst of the Year and Analyst Firm of the Year
AND THE WINNERS ARE…
Archive | Ovum
IIAR US Teleconference with Ovum MD – Q&A session
This week on Thursday 26th July at 11am ET / 8am PT Ovum’s top management team will once again be making themselves available for your Q&A on the future of Ovum. This will be a similar session to the one run in the UK in May and is a chance for you to hear directly from those setting the company’s strategy and future road map.
There won’t be any presentations, just the chance for you to ask questions that matter to you and affect your AR program. This really is a unique opportunity and we hope as many of you as possible will join us, ready with lots of questions to ask the panel.
Ovum speakers:
- Managing Director – Brett Azuma
- Global Director for IT – Ian Charlesworth
- Global Director for Telecoms – Richard Mahony
- Moderator: Gerry Van Zandt, HP AR / IIAR Board Member
If you would like to attend please email me asap to reserve your place on the call and get the dial-in details. This session is free for IIAR members and $25 for non-members.
[GUEST POST] Despite it all, Ovum is still a tier one analyst firm in Europe
Nice post on Ovum by the folks at Loudhouse Blog, reprinted here with their permission. Of course, because it’s a Loudhouse post it’s not the official IIAR position, in case anyone thought otherwise. See also the other Ovum posts on this blog, including the one on our recent IIAR London Forum featuring Ovum’s top management.
Ovum, which has been the leading European-headquartered analyst firm for around twenty years, has been going through a lot of change. That seems to be confusing both the vendor community and analyst relations professionals, who grilled the firm’s management recently. Vendors are questioning Ovum’s relevance now in way we have not seen before. The changes at Ovum are causing these confusions unintentionally but, despite that, the firm remains a key influencer in Europe.
The confusion is also a reflection of Ovum’s sales tactics. Many of our clients primarily experience Ovum through the way that its account managers approach them. In a pretty typical interaction this week, one of our wisest clients asked: does Ovum really matter? We meet them, and then they call back to sell us reprint rights on what we told them. Continue Reading →
Ovum lays out its strategy to the IIAR
Last week the IIAR was given an insight into the new strategy at Ovum in a one and a half hour Q&A session with four of the company’s top executives.
The in-person event in London saw Ovum’s MD (Brett Azuma), Global Director for IT (Ian Charlesworth), Global Director for Telecoms (Richard Mahony) and Chief Telecoms Analyst (Jan Dawson) all take time out of hectic schedules to personally answer IIAR members’ questions and provide an update on the company’s future direction.
IIAR UK Forum reminder: Your chance to hear about the future of Ovum
Here’s a little reminder that on Wednesday 30th May at 4-6:30pm BST, the IIAR will be holding a Forum with three of the Ovum senior management team. If you didn’t get a chance to meet with Brett at the recent Ovum Industry Congress or would like to find out what you missed this is your opportunity! This will be a panel discussion allowing you to get your questions answered and will be moderated by Simon Levin (IIAR UK Co-Chapter Lead).
Ovum speakers:
- MD – Brett Azuma
- Global Director for IT – Ian Charlesworth
- Global Director for Telecoms – Richard Mahony Continue Reading →
IIAR UK Forum: Come and meet Ovum’s Senior Management Team
For the next IIAR UK Forum in London on Wednesday 30th May at 4pm BST, we’re delighted to welcome Ovum MD Brett Azuma, Global Director for Ovum IT Ian Charlesworth, and Global Director for Ovum Telecoms Richard Mahony. We’re meeting with Brett, Ian and Richard just after the Ovum Industry Congress, being held in London from the 23-24 May, so this will be a great opportunity to hear the latest news at Ovum and what’s upcoming, and find out more about Ovum’s strategy and how this is developing.
In addition, David Treacher (Industry AR Manager, Dassault Systemes) will be sharing his insights on how he runs a global AR programme. This will be an opportunity to share experiences and views of the analyst companies that we all typically work with.
Plus there will be updates from IIAR Board member, David Rossiter and the IIAR UK chapter.
Cloud Set to Dominate 2012
The UK’s recent IIAR Forum saw both IDC and Ovum present their predictions for the IT industry in 2012.
Cloud came through as the area of focus for 2012 and will be the dominant platform. While SaaS spend will be more discretionary, PaaS will be the fastest growing platform accounting for 80% of the volume of new applications distributed by the cloud, according to IDC. Ovum also put cloud as one of their key 2012 Super Themes saying there will be an evolution in the cloud with a focus on how to build the private cloud. Their feeling was, as with IDC, was that PaaS would be the fastest growing cloud segment and that enterprise adoption of the public cloud would significantly increase over the year.
Jane Doorly, VP of IDC discussed the industry’s shift to the “third platform” built on mobile, cloud, social, and Big Data technologies which will accelerate in 2012 forcing the industry’s leaders to make bold investments and fateful decisions. Continue Reading →
Ovum AR community call tomorrow (22/11/11)
A picture describes things better than a thousand words. In this case, the logos above depict quite well the changes Ovum experienced over the past few years. It will indeed be quite interesting to hear an update from the firm, now under Informa Telecom and Media (and no longer Datamonitor). There’s been some speculation about the future of Informa, so this call promises to be quite interesting. Continue Reading →
IIAR UK Gets Festive!
IIAR FORUM and CHRISTMAS NETWORKING WITH THE ANALYSTS
Thursday 8th December, 3pm onwards
What better way to end the year with than to hear about analyst predictions for 2012 and then meet with your analyst buddies and AR colleagues at an informal networking event over a celebratory glass. It’s an action-packed afternoon with two analyst presentations plus a formal introduction to the new IIAR Board.
The event will be held on Thursday 8th December in central London with the networking celebrations taking place immediately after. It’s a great opportunity to wish your analyst friends and AR colleagues a Happy Christmas while meeting some new faces too.
This event is very kindly being sponsored by Metia – a global digital marketing agency with vertical experts in PR, AR, partner marketing and customer advocacy.
Speakers:
- Dr Jane Doorly, VP European Research – IDC
- Richard Edwards, Principal Analyst – Ovum
- Tim Jennings, Research Fellow & Chief Analyst – Ovum
- IIAR Board – to be announced late November Continue Reading →
[IIAR London Forum] LinkedIn the number one social media site for analysts
LinkedIn is emerging as the new, more ‘serious’ forum for corporate social networking. It is useful, functional and widely recognised as a business tool. Some sites, such as twitter and facebook, can too often blur personal and professional with potentially damaging or simply embarrassing consequences. LinkedIn, however, is more focused on work contacts, history and trips overseas. The mobile app has further aided LinkedIn’s popularity making it a useful tool for analysts on the go.
This and more was discussed at the latest IIAR Forum by a guest panel of analysts in front of a packed crowd of AR professionals. Continue Reading →
[Guest Post] IIAR UK Forum – Sales and Social Media Debated
Contributor: David Rossiter, Head of Sunesis Analyst Relations and Director, Harvard PR
I was delighted to host the IIAR (Institute of Industry Analyst Relations) forum yesterday in a very sunny and hot London.
It is always great to see how many AR professionals are willing to come along and meet old friends, make new contacts, learn about best practice and share their own experiences.
Fionnula Fitzsimons gave an absolutely excellent presentation on AR and sales. It was interesting, insightful and practical. Anyone in AR who needs to get their sales teams on board and demonstrate the value that AR can add to the sales cycle should make sure they get a copy of her presentation (downloadable by IIAR members from Huddle).
And then, we had an excellent panel debate on how analysts use social media with Richard Edwards (Ovum), Dale Vile (Freeform Dynamics) and Dean Bubley (Disruptive Analysis). Robert De Souza of IPsoft chaired a lively discussion. Continue Reading →
September IIAR London Forum featuring social media
The IIAR will be holding its next UK Forum on Thursday 29th September, 3:45 – 6:30pm followed by an informal networking dinner. Included in this session will be an analyst panel on social media and case study around AR with sales. Continue Reading →
Green ICT debated at May 26th IIAR London Forum
Defining ‘Green IT’ in the eyes of the analyst community was a topic of much discussion at last week’s IIAR London Forum. Panellists argued that Green ICT was meaningless when it was used to only represent rather superficial initiatives and not tackle real programmes of change in reducing corporate energy consumption. The value of smart metering and smart grids was also discussed with some scepticism expressed over the true value of smart grids in particular for the outside world.
The remainder of the session saw David Taylor, IIAR Board member, talk about recent updates and host a very popular AR clinic. Notes of these sessions can be found on huddle under ‘Files’ / ‘IIAR London Forums’.
Our thanks go to the guest panellists: David Metcalfe, David Mitchell, Saverio Romeo and moderator, Martin Atherton.
IIAR members can download notes from the session and Ovum’s energy research agenda via huddle.
Ovum divorces from Datamonitor and graduates to Informa ownership
There has been some talk in AR circles for a few months now about a reorg at Ovum but the firm remained remarquably quiet about it. So in advance of tomorrow’s AR community call, here are some details about what’s going on.
All their analysts were gathered today near Heathrow for the Ovum Industry Summit, a customer event quite similar in form to the old Butler Group Symposia. Continue Reading →
IIAR Cafe with Carter Lusher – 12 May 2011
On Thursday 12th May 2011 the IIAR will be hosting an IIAR Café for its members in London, UK from 5:30-7:30pm. Continue Reading →
Ovum launches its ‘brief a ton’
We got an email from Carter Lusher (@carterlusher) during the bank holiday week-end announcing what could be a solution to the scheduling pains all AR pros are dealing with.
Quite simply, all analysts will be on the deck on a day (the 18th May 2011), at their London offices and available for briefings. So if you book early, you can brief a ton of Ovumites, probably why Carter calls this Massively Parallel Briefing a “Brief-A-Thon”. Continue Reading →
Le CXP and BARC merge: ignore local firms at your perils
BARC and Le CXP announced last week they were merging.
BARC (no Twitter handle?) is a German IT analysis firm founded in 1994 and focusing mostly on ECM and BI. Le CXP (@cxpoeilexpert or @cxplace) dates back from 1973 and was formed originally as an end-user consortium aiming at evaluating something new at the time, packaged software.
Both focus on the end-user and will have something like 30 analysts and consultants overall, focussing only on software and selling mostly to end-users. Le CXP is also in partnership with Penteo (@PenteoAnalyst) in Spain.
Those three players, are some kind of exception for having built strong and resilient local IT Analysis firms. There are many other EMEA players, some such as Ovum are more global in nature, other like PAC are vendor-facing or are more about consulting (e.g. Experton). And many more in the UK.
Key takeaway for AR pros:
- All those firms do answer a need for local knowledge in local langage
- For a reason, they can’t be easily dismissed, most of them for instance have a high SOV in their local market
- Some also have a prescriber role with end-users, typically below the radar of larger US firms
- Others have an expertise in the ecosystem and channels
- AR professionals should incorporate local influencers into their plans, even if they can appear as a low priority from 5,000 miles away
- Sometimes, they’re best “handled” through a GloCal model (members should read the IIAR Best Practice Papers on International AR > link 1, link 2)
Ovum’s got a brand new AR soapbox
Following the successful IIAR Forums with Ovum, the firm has decided to hold regular calls for the AR community.
The first AR Community Call will be on Thursday 19th May 2011 at 0900 PDT / 1200 EDT / 1700 BST / 1800 CEST. Continue Reading →
Reminder to Attend Jan 20th IIAR London Forum
The IIAR London Forum is scheduled for Thursday, January 20th in Central London from 3:45 – 6:30 pm. The guest analyst session will feature a discussion with Ovum analysts. Brett Azuma, Senior Vice President at Ovum will be joined by Tim Jennings and Carter Lusher.
We still have a few places left, and non-members are invited to attend one London Forum. Please RSVP to Jane Courtenay, jcourtenay(at)analystrelations(dot)org.
January IIAR London Forum Features Ovum
The IIAR London Forum is scheduled for Thursday, January 20th in Central London from 3:45 – 6:30 pm.
The guest analyst session will feature Brett Azuma, Senior Vice President at Ovum.
Members should RSVP to Jane Courtenay, jcourtenay(at)analystrelations(dot)org.