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.
London, Wednesday 27th November 2019. At the IIAR> we believe in taking a stance and recognising greatness when we see it -an approach we find more impactful than sprinkling awards to dozens of “winners”.
Today, at the IIAR> London Christmas Party kindly sponsored by HCL, we celebrated the top industry analysts and firms of the year. The IIAR> surveyed analyst relations professionals globally and from diverse industries, predictably casting a wide net on coverage areas. The evaluation used the IIAR SOSM methodology, to reflect the best practice promoted within the IIAR> looking at not only perceived sales impact, but also strategic insights, resonance in the media and ease of doing business with.
This year, analyst relations (AR) professionals have voted and provided clear insights both on the value they see from analysts, as well as how they perceive industry analyst firms’ value to them as clients. There were some interesting shifts in the 2019 results compared to prior years…read on to learn more!
Without further ado, the Analyst Relations community has spoken and the winners are….
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.
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
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).
Those two deals are nothing less than tectonic shifts in the tech influencers space.
Firstly, the acquisition of CEB by Gartner is notable for three reasons:
1. It’s large. 3 billion dollars gorilla like.
If there was no overlap and divestures (CEB also sells some software which Gartner will have to offload to prevent conflicts of interests), the combined turnover Gartner and CEB turnover would be over USD3.3 billions (2.4b+951m) we’re seeing a 40% increase in revenues and the combined entity is on course towards 2,000 analysts. The next players, IDC and Forrester are around USD 300m in revenues, give or take. The last estimates I saw (a while back mind you) were that Gartner has anywhere between 40 to 60% market share. Having such a dominant player means higher prices (some say higher margins were the driver behind Gartner’s acquisition of META Group) and less bargaining power for buyers. It’s also obviously hard to ignore Gartner, so a little advice to vendors is maybe not to pick fights with them -such is their share of mind with technology buyers.
According to Outsell, Information, Media and Technology was around USD 1.6 trillion in 2016.
However, just like in the old PCM days, Gartner knows to leave scraps to second fiddles and it leaves space to disruptors -in particular on the sell-side. The IIAR Analyst Firm of the Year constantly showed that 451, Constellation, HfS and other players are definitely more than just worth looking at. And as Crawford Del Prete argues it, a second opinion can be invaluable.
2. Is Gartner plateau’ing?
With the CEB acquisition, Gartner gets access to new C-suite roles. Surely, I’d bet most CEB CIO customers also buy Gartner services and so there might be a bit of customer set duplication however CEB also serves HR, Sales, Finance and Legal functions. In fact Gartner claims it will become the leading global research and advisory company for all major functions in the entreprise.
So this is not a META Group style margins-led competitive take-out (2005) but more an expansion into new markets just like in 2009 as Gartner bought AMR, SCM World and Burton to address techies and supply chain roles.
One could infer that after years of tinkering with metrics to get more leverage, the Gartner executive team saw territory expansion as an EPS growth lever. In other words, this might signal that Gartner’s core business in IT research is plateauing? Nevertheless, with Gartner’s excellent track record in execution (IIAR members can read some tips on contract negotiation here) and international reach, expanding to other functions certainly has legs. It has already ventured in marketing and claim good growth, however Forrester still has a much better hold with this fickle audience.
The good news here for AR and influencer relations folks is the ability to leverage existing relations with Gartner to look at other audiences.
3. Does the age of algorithm prediction also apply to Gartner?
Personally, I believe the most significant impact of this acquisition is cultural. After buying and developing no less than three peer reviews offerings Gartner is moving further in the peer to peer advisory world with CEB. This is important not only because buyers value the advice from their peers more than anyone else’s but also because all of a sudden, the mighty technology priest, the feared predicator, the revered oracle becomes is demoted from his/her ivory tower. Truth ceases to be a caste monopoly and becomes the product of algorithm. Gartner famously predicted in the 2015 Symposia the age of the algorithm economy, where those become valuable IP that needs cherishing and runs the world.
As Gartner grapples with the difficult challenge of embedding more bottom-up logic in its research and offerings, it will be interesting to watch what this does to the role of the analyst: will they merely curate and socialise the result of increasingly automated insights? Looking at the profitability of Gartner’s EXP services, this might well be a wet dreams for its execs.
Since the disparition of founder Pat McGovern and his philanthropic wish to progress research on the human brain, the media group IDG he founded -and parent of analyst firm IDC– was up for sale for two years with several cliffhangers. We know little of Chain Oceanwide, however my bet would be for a divestiture of IDC at some point.
Whilst IDC predominantly addresses tech vendors, it also enjoys a great brand recognition and probably has the best geographical reach of all firms but none. Yet, its attempts to crack the end-user (buy-side) research and advisory services (RAS) business petered out, I suppose due to poor execution and a lack of investment in sales and go-to-market.
We’ve asked IDC to come and update the IIAR members -stay tuned!
Today we ask our probing questions of Shawn Fitzgerald, (LinkedIn, @IDC), Research Director, World Wide Digital Transformation Strategies at IDC. Shawn recently joined IDC .
What are your coverage areas?
I’m responsible for leading and coordinating IDC’s World Wide Digital Transformation (DX) Strategies Practice and continuing to ensure IDC’s thought leadership in the digital economy. As you may already know, IDC estimates the economic value of DX to be $20T or more than 20% of global GDP.
What are your opinions of the IT Analysis Marketplace and where do you see it going?
The role and value we, as analysts, provide is tremendous and is ever more important to smart technology strategies. Today, technology is so core to businesses delivering on their brand promises, both products and services. Making a bad technology decision has such an impact on strategic and operational performance in a way that wasn’t the case 20 or 30 years ago. Conversely, making the right choices can enable break-through business performance and really create world-class customer differentiation capabilities. I’ve yet to meet successful business leaders who don’t want access to those insights. Continue Reading →
The IIAR is delighted to announce the winners of this year’s
IIAR Analyst of the Year 2015 and IIARAnalyst Firm of the Year 2015
AND THE WINNERS ARE…
Keep reading below for the IIAR Analyst of Year 2015, IIAR Global Analyst Firm of Year 2015, IIAR Independent Analyst of the Year 2015 and the best new entrants.
The IIAR analyst of the year2015 was a close run thing this year round. Unlike previous years there was a lot more variety in the numbers and kinds of analysts chosen. Analyst relations professionals voted for over 150 different individual analysts, rating them along a wide range of criteria that included: their knowledge of the domain, does their research give actionable advice, is it novel and thought provoking etc; through to questions about their impact on technology adoption; and whether they were easy and flexible to work with from an analyst relations point of view.Continue Reading →
I’ve been watching analysts for a long time and think this is fascinating -I was waiting for such a “JD Power of Tech” for a long time. The piece talks about Chaordix and Whale Path, and I’ve known for a while about G2 Crowd. Another well known so called Peer Review Site (PRS) is TrustRadius.
If they get it right, it will finally change the analyst business. Continue Reading →
Last year, as part of the 2014 IIAR Analyst of The Year Survey, we invited analyst relations professionals to rate their favourite industry analyst individuals and the firms they worked for. More than 60 individual organisations responded to our survey. We were interested to see if we could do further analysis on the data that was collected.
When we set out to do the IIAR Analyst of the Year (with Helen Chantry), we always had envisioned doing a Magic Quadrant of analyst firms. This year the survey provided us with further information which we have been able to breakdown and analyse to provide a more detailed understanding of how analyst relations professionals perceive the relevance, impact and reachability of industry analyst firms. We are not claiming that this is an exhaustive study. Rather it simply opens a new (slightly cheeky – hence the notion of “Tragic Quadrant”) window onto the analyst landscape, where we attempt to rank industry analyst firms by impact, relevance and ease to do business with. Continue Reading →
October 15th, 2014 was a busy day for IDC. In addition to Marianne Kolding (VP, IDC European Services) presenting at the latest IIAR UK Forum IDC launched a new portfolio of decision making technologies – see the IDC Press Release below. Details of IDC’s DecisionScape, MarketScape and FutureScape are available for members <<here>>. A recording of the UK Forum held on the 15th October is available <<here>>. 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.
