Around Kevin McIsaac from IBRS in 10 questions

I recently noticed we’re not giving much love to analysts based in APAC -a tragic oversight considering all the talents located down-under!   Dr Kevin McIsaac (bio, LinkedIn), from IBRS kindly obliged with taking the interview below. IBRS has been created by a few ex-META Group analysts and delivers mostly end-user consulting in Australia.

1. What are your coverage areas?
   Servers, storage, server and desktop virtualisation.
2. What are your opinions of the IT Analysis Marketplace and where do you see it going?
   In Australia, the acquisition of META by Gartner left a big gap in the market that has not been served by the major Vendors (Forrester, Ovum etc). This creates a great opportunity for a local company to provide a high touch, customer intimate service.
   Since data/information can be easily distributed via the internet, I think the traditional published research services are worth less, not worthless, but worth less. What customers can’t get from the internet is the experience of the author put into the context of the customer.  So I think the future is that published research is increasingly commoditised and “insight and advice” from analyst interaction remains a valuable service that customes will pay a premium for.
3. What’s your typical day like?
   Pretty damn good really!
4. How do you position your firm? What is your business model?
   We are positioned as trusted advisors, providing in-context advice. For smaller organisation we position ourselves as the primary/only research vendor. In large organisation we the first choice for a second opinion, generally against Gartner.
5. What is your research methodology?
   We create a view point based on our experience and extensive customer interactions, either phone or face 2 face.  We don’t do exhaustive surveys.
6. Any favourite AR professional you’d like to mention? Any why?
   That is tough, there are two really good people in Australia that I deal with. Terina Doherty from Oracle and Emma Rogers from VMware. They know my research agenda and make sure that I get connected to the right people no matter where they are in the world.
7. Tell us about one good AR practice you’ve experienced or one good AR event you’ve atttended.
   To me the most important practice is “Know the analyst’s coverage area” and only send information that is truely relevant to that.
8. What are your offerings and key deliverables?
   We have a retained research service which includes  a monthly research publication and unlimited phone access to the analysts. We do some strategic consulting for end-users and run executive round tables on specific topics.
9. Any hobbies or favourite restaurant / food that you’d like to share?
   Body sufing
10. Is there another analyst (a peer in your firm or with another firm) whose work  you rate highly?
    the best I’ve seen is my old research manager from META Group, Nick Gall. Brilliant!