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.
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 →
IDC Europe is looking for a Research Manager to build out its next-generation application services research. The successful candidate will report to the management of IDC European Enterprise Research Group.
IDC Europe is looking for a Research Lead to build out its services research. The successful candidate will report to the management of IDC European Enterprise Research Group.
IDC is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. With more than 1,100 analysts worldwide, IDC offers global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends in over 110 countries.
IDC’s Personal Computing Devices research group in Europe is looking for a Senior research analyst to support the expansion of its research and business.
This is a highly visible position that requires the candidate to develop cutting-edge qualitative and quantitative research for IDC’s exceptionally diverse base of clients that includes hardware and software vendors and providers of IT services. A successful candidate will be a subject-matter expert on personal computers (notebooks, desktops, workstations and gaming computers), and related technologies, and will have a strong knowledge of distribution and commercial channels. The focus of the role is to develop ongoing syndicated research and custom research for specific projects, as well as be a key quantitative contributor to the IDC Personal Computing Devices Tracker Program.
IDC’s PCD research helps IT Vendors and end users understand the impact of personal devices and emerging technologies on their business plans and execution. These emerging technologies include Cognitive Computing, Robotics, Mobile Systems, Advanced Security, among other leading-edge technologies. We are looking for innovative thinkers to take a dynamic role within the team, promoting and supporting industry-specific IT market research. Candidates should bring extensive knowledge especially in the analysis of the value and trends of IT investment across industry sectors and among small and medium-sized companies. The candidate will work with industry leaders to identify and analyze strategic business issues and key use cases for a wide range of technology solutions.
The role is based in London, and will involve some travel, predominantly in Europe but occasionally to other regions.
We have had the pleasure for Giorgio taking time out of his busy schedule to take part in our infamous 10 questions. Giorgio is a research director for IDC’s European Infrastructure and Cloud research and leads the team of analysts responsible for tracking the cloud infrastructure, server, storage and converged systems markets in Western Europe.
What are your coverage areas?
My main focus area is European infrastructure, a broad spectrum of things ranging from Multicloud management software to service provider datacenters. I’m also increasingly involved in this year’s research sprints (we call them Launchpads) around emerging technologies (Quantum, Edge, Blockchain…) driven by brilliant analysts across multiple IDC teams.
What are your opinions of the IT Analysis Marketplace and where do you see it going?
Analysing the analysts! Three trends I see: the traditional need for ad-personam advisory to IT buyers is not only steady but increasing. With technology topics becoming ever more complex (see the interdependencies of Multicloud, or political nature of Blockchain use cases or AI’s ethical dilemmas), leaders need fact-and face-based opinions more than ever. The second is the changing nature of data. Data are the wheels of any self-respecting research vehicle. In the 3rd Platform era, generating data differently, from new sources and manipulating it better and faster than ever before is crucial. The third is the growing connection between branding, marketing and analyst house services – i.e. the analyst company becoming a digital agency.
What’s your typical day like?
The day starts at breakfast or in the bus, swiping through emails. After that it’s a lot of “Can you guys hear me alright?”, pulling out the toothpaste at security LHR T2 and providing feedback on reports and deliverables. The fun part are workshops or improvised whiteboard meetings with customers, and the unpredictable, sometimes heated conversations with IT buyers at our events. Also enjoyable are the rare isolation days (often in summer heat) with a piece of paper and pen, drawing the research agenda for the next months.
Now, c’mon, tell me an AR horror story?
Not a horror – but a thriller story. I’ve once attended an analyst event linked to a broader customer conference where the facilities were just not fit (or not booked properly). The poor AR person spent two days leading a bunch of analysts (distracted fellas in general) across ultra-crowded, immense halls from one meeting room to another, holding a tourist guide sign and a megaphone. In rare cases did the analysts arrive on time. In some cases they never made it to the meeting room. I think a couple of analysts are still roaming in that conference center (haven’t seen them since). In another case I flew into Vegas on the promise of an analyst track with executives – except there was no such thing, only technical sessions. Learnt my lesson on asking for agendas then!
What is your research methodology?
The ideas stem from anecdotal discussions with “Pathfinder” IT buyers and other IDC analysts. The proof points from primary research in form of small to large surveys. The hard data on market numbers from vendor conversations and guidance process.
Any favourite AR professional you’d like to mention? Any why?
Most of AR folks I know are great and enable easy access to vendor executives. I’ve worked closely and for a long time with Jos Baltes (HPE) who is not only hyper-responsive but also great to get a beer with. Most recently Caroline Dennington (NetApp) adds the British humour (!) – Antonella Crimi (Equinix) and Anna Carzana (AMD) the Italian flair. I’m missing several I know – impossible to mention all!
Tell us about one good AR practice you’ve experienced or one good AR event you’ve attended.
I’ve recently attended a one-day analyst-only event where keynotes were kept to less than 1 hour and most of the day was spent on one-to-ones, with some breaks in between. I thought it was great – even if I ended up talking myself dry. A good AR practice is booking events in the calendar well in advance – even if analysts themselves are sloppy RSVPers!
What are your offerings and key deliverables?
Within my team, we deliver on a subscription program with report, surveys and customer enquiries; release multiple Tracker datasets on a quarterly basis and work on challenging custom project advising vendors and buyers on infrastructure-related decisions. A recent one I liked was advisory work for a custom chipset manufacturer to identify and position their Edge Computing and Gateway strategy.
Any hobbies or favourite restaurant / food that you’d like to share?
With a mixed Asian-Italian family we are way too fussy about food. For the Londoners – L’oro di Napoli in South Ealing. For the Frankfurters – Sushi Boy in Eschersheimer Tor; Lam Freres in Bahnhofsviertel.
What is your biggest challenges for the upcoming 6 months? And for the next 30 mn?
Selecting what NOT to do or cover is the tough one for the next 6 months. With Innovation Accelerators kicking off it’s like the candy shop, but one can’t do everything properly! Next 30 minutes getting home on time for dinner!
IDC is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. IDC helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community make fact-based decisions on technology purchases and business strategy. More than 1000 IDC analysts provide global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends in over 110 countries worldwide. For more than 50 years, IDC has provided strategic insights to help our clients achieve their key business objectives. IDC is a subsidiary of IDG, the world’s leading technology media, research, and Event Company.
About the position
IDC Europe is looking for a Research Lead to build out its European infrastructure research. The successful candidate will report to the management of IDC European Infrastructure group. The role is located either at our London office or office in Germany: Frankfurt / Munich.
Feeling the pinch in your negotiation with IDC on your subscription contract? Do you feel comfortable in buying the various Customer Segment (CS) options being pushed your way? Are you confident that you are getting value from your contracts? You’re not alone – many of your peers and IIAR members have commented (see the IIAR Tragic Quadrant 2017)
IDC may be amongst the top IIAR Analyst Firm of the Year 2017 but are you getting the best value from your relationship? As per the IIAR Analyst Firm of the Year 2017 survey, AR professionals mentioned that they felt a push by IDC for running joint events, buying new CS which themselves are granular subset of the larger IDC CS access. As the analysts manage the P&L, they too seem to want to push buying multiple granular CS. Continue Reading →
This week, we’re delighted to present you some insights from the just promoted Margaret Adam / IDC (@madam_idc, LinkedIn, blog) with our world famous ten questions.
What are your coverage areas? Officially, European Channels and Alliances, more broadly this really looks at all kinds of go-to-market and partnering relationships from traditional channel (distie, VAR, SI, MSP, ISV, etc) to new routes to market (marketplaces and cloud service brokerages) to non-traditional partners (start-ups, strategy consulting, industry cloud, digital agencies etc). Essentially, I look at routes to market and advise our customers on the optimum route to market in Europe both in the short term and longer term. Continue Reading →
By Suzannah Archibald (LinkedIn,@suzannah_a),Head of Analyst Relations at CCgroup.
IDC is usually one of the better analyst houses I encounter. They usually show tight co-ordination amongst their end-user practices, and reach out and access their client and subscriber database across over 10,000 IT decision-maker professionals (and counting). So, in mid-2017, what’s changed at IDC? And how are they handling organisational change since their change of ownership, earlier this year? These were just some of the questions posed by Industry Analyst Relations professionals at a recent IIAR webinar and networking session with…
Dan Timberlake (UK&I MD, VP Sales, EMEA), Tom Meyer (GVP Research EMEA, @tomtxt), and Mathew Heath (EMEA Marketing Director, himself the brains behind the always-entertaining @IDC_EMEA account). Continue Reading →
Tom Meyer / GVP IDC EMEA (LinkedIn, @tomtxt) and Dan Timberlake /UK MD IDC (LinkedIn) will be giving IIAR members an exclusive overview of IDC on the 18th May 2017 both in person and by webinar with a deeper dive into some of the interesting areas such as
Major themes in the industry and how IDC is responding
Faster development of new areas
Actionability of IDC product on vendor / buyer side
Buyer tools
Interactions w/ customers and how they are changing
