Institute of Industry Analyst Relations (IIAR)The IIAR is a not-for-profit organisation established to raise awareness of analyst relations and the value of industry analysts, promote best practice amongst analyst relations professionals, enhance communication between analyst firms and vendors, and offer opportunities for AR practitioners to network with their industry peers.
It’s been fascinating to watch Ovum for the past 15+ or so years, acquiring Butler Group, merging and un-merging with Datamonitor, buying RHK and then been purchased by event giant Informa.
The last chapter saw Informa buying the research-part of IHS, namely IHS Markit Technology (August 2019), Tractica (July 2018) and moving it all into shiny new offices on the Southbank together with Informa’s other brands: Screen Digest, iSupply, Computerwire (bought in August 2016), Heavy Reading, Infonetics, IMS and Displaybank.
Fashionably late but always on point and by popular request here’s the IIAR Tragic Quadrant 2018, a representation of how Analyst Relations Professionals (AR Pros) have rated analyst firms in the 2018 survey we ran for the Analyst and Firm of the Year 2018.
For new readers here, the Tragic Quadrant is of course a pun on the infamous Gartner ‘Magic Quadrant’. We do not pretend this as an exhaustive analysis -nor is it a completely serious piece of research (the “Tragic” moniker is there as a reminiscence it should be taken with a pinch of salt). Nonetheless it is based on data and, as opposed to the Gartner Magic Quadrant, there are no magical and secretive weightings. As such, it is a good indication going back several years of the changes afoot in the industry analyst landscape and the judgement analyst relations professionals cast on industry research firms. And it provides actionable insights AR pros can use, something other surveys in this field often lack.
Informa (INF.L) has acquiredIHS Markit’s (INFO) TMT business. Informa Tech, which includes Ovum, will have revenues similar to Forrester’s $350m. It represents a dramatic shift in the analyst landscape.
Informa announced the transaction on 22 May as part of an exchange of Informa’s agribusiness service for IHS Markit’s TMT portfolio, including the OTT and media teams.
A sixty-year-old firm built through acquisitions, IHS its has absorbed numerous tech research firms, including Infonetics Research and IMS Research.
IHS Markit has clarified that it will retain RootMetrics and part of its market intelligence business. Because the exchange is subject to US regulatory approval, it can’t be completed until July at the earliest.
By Barry Rabkin (LinkedIn, @Impactoftech), President & Principal Analyst, Market Insight Group, Ltd.
I was fortunate to become an insurance industry analyst in 1997.
Before that time, I had worked in the business side of the insurance industry for 17 years (primarily in marketing and/or market research across all major lines of business) and then due to, what was to prove a very lucky event in hindsight, being caught up in a purge from John Hancock, becoming a management consultant. After eight years as a management consultant, I got and grabbed the opportunity to become an insurance industry analyst. I definitely found my true professional love being a part of the analyst community. [One difference between a management consultant and an analyst? Analysts don’t have to be nice!]
My insurance industry analyst experience included leading or launching and leading insurance strategic advisory services in the US and the UK. Looking back at those experiences at META Group, Financial Insights (IDC), and Ovum, these highlights standout to me. BTW Before going into my highlights I want to state that I respected all three firms for not being just vertical (i.e. industry) analyst firms but instead were homes for analysts from a large variety of IT and Telco disciplines as well as having vertical analysts. Continue Reading →
Who’d have thought Christmas would come this early? Grab a glass of bubbles, put on the festive music and light the fire. It’s time to unveil the IIAR Analyst Of The Year award winners.
2018 was a year in which influencer relations became more important in delivering business impact, and so unsurprisingly analysts’ voices have been a critical focus for sales enablement and marketing. We see analysts themselves continuing to build profile beyond repors, through social media and content, and in response organisations are ramping their commitment to tracking how analysts impact their brand. It’s an exciting, evolving time.
So for the IIAR community, it’s important to recognise the range of analysts and firms who are leading the way. We listen carefully to the voices of our members and remain fully engaged with the global analyst network.
To this end we’ve heard from the community in eleven countries across four continents. We’ve reviewed hundreds of nominations and thousands of point scores. Award winners were determined based on the scoring provided by IIAR members, in accordance with the IIAR SOSMmethodology. The nominations therefore reflect the best practice promoted within the IIAR.
All of this leads to one thing – as a festive drumroll is unleashed – the award winners…Continue Reading →
The temperature may be dropping, but things have been heating up in the analyst community. Yes, it’s that time of year when we ask you to put the analysts themselves under the spotlight.
The 2017 IIAR Analyst of the Year Award nominations saw some hot competition, but inevitably there can be only one winner (well, actually we have three, but more about that shortly). Announced at the IIAR Christmas Party, kindly sponsored by Criteo, we celebrated the successes of some of the industry’s favourite thinkers and most serious strategists.Continue Reading →
Ovum (related blog posts, website) the UK-based analyst firm which enjoys a soft spot in the hearts of many AR pros, has gone through tough times in recent years.
Multiple changes of ownership accompanied by several different MDs have led to inconsistent and regularly changing strategies for the business, and a considerable turnover of staff.
Is this period in Ovum’s history now at an end, following the appointment of Aneil Rakity (LinkedIn) as the MD in 2016?
David Rossiter (LinkedIn, @davidrossiter), IIAR UK Chapter and director of analyst relations at Harvard, had the opportunity recently to sit down with Aneil and chief research officer Tim Jennings (@tjennings, LinkedIn) to find out what’s going on.
Read on for this and don’t miss the IIAR Webinar with Ovum on Wednesday 25th October > REGISTER NOW.
PLEASE NOTE THAT UNFORTUNATELY WE HAVE TO POSTPONE THIS SESSION, apologies for any inconvenience caused
There are lots of rumours on what is going on at Ovum. David Rossiter, Sunesis Global AR (LinkedIn, @davidrossiter), will be hosting an IIAR Cafe with the MD and Chief Research Officer, providing you with the perfect opportunity to come meet with and learn what is really going on.
Aneil Rakity, managing director(LinkedIN)and Tim Jennings, chief research officer, (LinkedIN, @tjennings) will be sharing the truth about what’s happening at Ovum and putting to bed some of the rumours that have been flying around about the company for the past couple of years, including the future of the brand. The presentation and open Q&A session will include updates on Ovum’s strategy, market positioning, target markets and competitive differentiators as well as the latest on its research organisation and research agenda. They’ll also be talking about how Ovum fits within Informa, the big investments taking place in product development, its expansion into the US market and the continuing convergence between Ovum’s service provider and technology teams.
If you’re interested in Ovum, this is a “don’t miss” event. Pre-registration is essential
Date: TO BE CONFIRMED Time: TO BE CONFIRMED Location: London & Webinar
Note that this event is open to IIAR members, the Forum is free to attend for IIAR Members (another good reason for joining the IIAR) or for non-members there is a fee of £75 that is redeemable against IIAR Membership over the next 12 months. Click here to proceed.
Two years ago, in 2015, we produced the first IIAR Tragic Quadrant. It was met with much enthusiasm and comment, thus we have decided to repeat the exercise once again this year. Below we present the Tragic Quadrant for 2017. The Tragic Quadrant is compiled from data collected as part of the 2016 IIAR Analyst of the Year Survey, where, annually, we invite analyst relations professionals to rate individual industry analyst and the firms they work for. This year more than 100 different individual organisations responded to our survey. We were interested to see if we could do further analysis on the data that was collected.
In producing the Tragic Quadrant what we sought to do was to rank analyst firms according to three criteria. We chose these criteria because this is what the IIAR survey asks respondents to assess:
Impact: The Y axis depicts the ‘Impact’ of the industry analyst firm on the purchase decision. This also relates to their perceived credibility and capability to provide an objective opinion.
Relevance: The X axis marks their ‘Relevance’ for the purchase decision. This means their capability to cover the market and their specific geographical allocation. It also includes public recognition of their presence in the market (e.g. as an expert).
Interaction: The size of the bubble is ‘Interaction’. This relates to issues of communication (e.g. how easy is it to get to them and to talk to them).
Industry analysts, more specifically the buy-side “prescribers” exist to help technology buyers (often referred to as end-users) select the best vendors and providers. They gather insights through public and private sources such as (semi-)private vendor briefings and conversations (inquiries) with their end-user subscribers. Some analysts take hundreds of briefings and inquiries in a year, allowing them to gather unique insights on the market segments they cover. This accumulated knowledge allow them to monetise this information asymmetry as reports, consulting sessions, speaking engagements, etc.
1. What are your coverage areas?
As Chief Research Officer at Ovum, my focus is less on a specific topic, and more on how technology overall is being applied to create business value. That said, I need to keep abreast of all the hot topics, and be able to hold vaguely sensible conversations on anything from converged infrastructure to customer experience. If I was to pick the coverage area that I enjoy most, it would be BI and information management.
At 17:00 on the 26th June, the UK arm of the IIAR is meeting with Steve Hotham CEO of the newly merged Ovum / ITM Research company (which is branded Ovum), along with Martin Hill, MD of Ovum’s Telecoms Research and Consulting, and Ian Charlesworth, MD of Ovum’s IT Research and Consulting.
They will be presenting the new Ovum organisation and its new product range and capabilities as well as explaining the many changes that have taken place as a result of the merger, which was announced in April. Continue Reading →
The new CEO at Ovum, Steve Hotham, is hosting a webinar on Thursday this week (May 22nd 2014) at 1600 UK time.
It’s open to all AR professionals and users of the current Ovum and Informa Telecoms & Media (ITM) research services.
According to Claire Booty, PR manager for Ovum, Steve will use the webinar to explain the rationale behind the merger of Ovum and ITM, highlight its new products, research agenda, and introduce key staff appointments.
If you want to attend, just email Claire with the names, job roles and contact details of those who wish to attend. She’ll send you all the details.
About the author
David Rossiter (LinkedIn, @davidrossiter) runs Sunesis, a specialist AR agency, and writes the Analyst Insight blog. He is a former board member of the IIAR and is now co-chair of the UK chapter.
It’s been quite a long time in the making, it follows many acquisition rumours, many merger denials, but it’s finally there: Ovum merges with Informa Telecom and Media.
On paper, it’s the fourth ICT analysis firm of the market, depending on where place the line between analysis and market research. The staff doesn’t change much and they’re keeping the stronger brand, Ovum.
The merged business, which will be fully integrated by the end of May, will be led by Steve Hotham, current MD of Ovum, who will become its CEO. Spread across 23 offices, in 6 continents, Ovum will employ 275 staff, including 180 analysts providing a combination of global and local insight.
The press release doesn’t menti0n end-user influence, a key difference between both firms, but the Ovum Industry Congress is coming soon and will be a good place to assess this.
There are few reasons to change my conclusions from a previous post:
Ovum remains a credible analyst firm in its key markets, so AR folks should not discount it
AR pros should look for opportunities to leverage this 180-analysts strong firm, while watching for coverage gaps
AR pros should consider Ovum’s vertical technology expertise when creating vertical AR plans/programmes as it’s part of its DNA AR pros should check vertical coverage outside of telco
Like many other research firms, Ovum needs to more clearly articulate its differentiation and generate market awareness via sharper thought leadership
It was good to hear from Brett Azuma last week. He got in touch to let me know he’s just been appointed to lead the 60-strong analyst team at 451 Research.
If you don’t know him already, Brett’s an experienced and well-respected leader. He’s previously held senior positions at Ovum, where he was managing director, and Gartner, where he was group vice president/chief analyst. Continue Reading →
If your research firm was a car manufacturer, which one would you be? In the early 20th century, there were hundreds of cars manufacturers and automobiles bought by nobility and industrialists. Fast forward to the present day: mass production has made them accessible to virtually all households and there are now fewer than 10 global car manufacturers. The story is much the same for IT, only on a 30-40 year time frame: just like Hispano-Suiza, few remember Prime Computers, and servers are now bought by business types rather than being operated by an army of lab coats. In other words, IT is becoming more normal from all aspects: financial, procurement, usage… yet more pervasive than ever. Just like you would not think of riding on horseback to fetch your loaf of bread, who could do without accessing email on their smartphone? Continue Reading →
Not all IT research is about numbers, but the IT analyst business definitely is. It’s a business after all, and if you don’t make the numbers, you don’t have a business. But what’s interesting is how many different ways there are to make the numbers stack up.
It’s somewhat ironic that while IT analyst firms often rely on public – and private – disclosure of information from both vendors and end-user organisations to make their prognostications, they often don’t like to reveal too much about their own businesses. The big public firms, Gartner & Forrester, disclose good detail about their revenues to meet their statutory requirements, and perhaps a little more, while the private firms tend to be fairly vague. Continue Reading →
The London Forum started with a best practices roundtable chaired by IIAR Board Member Caroline Dennington (@CDennington, LinkedIn) and one of the IIAR UK Chapter Leads David Rossiter (@davidrossiter, LinkedIn) on sponsoring analyst events. One of the many issues covered circled around the ROI of sponsorship packages vs. simple hospitality. Continue Reading →
The next IIAR London Forum will be held on March 7th at 1600 GMT in London (near Victoria)!
For this event we have two great topics on the agenda:
Best Practice session on ‘Sponsoring and Exhibiting at Analyst Events’. Which events and sponsorship types work, what are some of the best practices to get the best value from your investment and which specific analyst events work (and which don’t). Led by a panel of expert AR professionals including Caroline Dennington (Symantec) and Julian Dobbins (Micro Focus).
Analyst Roundtable on ‘Hot Buttons for Financial Services’. Where will the analysts be focusing their research in this sector in 2013 and how can you best position your company’s products and services as a result. Confirmed for this panel are Peter Redshaw (Gartner), Daniel Mayo (Ovum), Catherine Stagg-Macey (Celent), Alex Kwiatkowski (IDC Financial Insights) and Ralph Silva (SRN, HfS and often times the BBC) with Sally Yates (Metia) as chair.
I was fortunate to become an insurance industry analyst in 1997.
