Updated: Quocirca loses another analyst

This time it's Jon Collins. He's leaving the analyst world completely
(at least for a few months) to go and work on a project in the music
world. It's all "hush hush" at the moment but I'm sure if you keep an
eye on his blog, Jon will be writing about it as soon as he can go public.

Importantly for Quocirca directors Clive Longbottom and Bob Tarzey,
Jon's exit is completely unrelated to the recent departure of co-founder Dale Vile. Of course it now means Quocirca has another slot to fill and as we hear business is good, I'm sure that's something they'll be looking to do sooner rather than later.

Update (January 26 2006):
Jon's been helping Mike Oldfield write his autobiography.

Ovum to appoint head of "industry intelligence"

Phil Codling has been explaining to me some changes over at Ovum.

The firm has been moving towards a 'practice structure' in which services and expertise are organised into more logical groupings. One of these is "Industry Intelligence", which combines Phil's Holway service with Ovum Euroview, run by Douglas Hayward.

Ovum is now hiring for a Practice Leader-IT Services. This person will fulfil the (currently vacant) role of head of the Industry Intelligence practice "as well as potentially taking a more 'holistic' view of what Ovum does across Software and IT Services."

When asked if Ovum was planning to launch a new pan-European IT Services practice, Phil was clear that there's no plan for the new hire to run a specific new service.

Cathren Whelton leaves Ovum

Cathren Whelton has left Ovum in the past couple of weeks.

Officially, the PR department is now going to be responsible for working with vendors and agencies to set-up analyst briefings.

Yankee Group gets sold again

Yankee Group has been sold yet again.

Private equity firm Alta Communications has acquired it from Decision Matrix Group, another private equity company.

Outsell has a fairly upbeat assessment of the purchase.

Will it have an impact over here? I'm sure Duncan and Armadgeddon will have some interesting views on that. I'm looking forward to reading them.

Ovum update - recent developments

Duncan Chapple's got a nice overview post on recent developments at Ovum.

Quocirca analyst starts new firm

Dale Vile, who left Quocirca earlier this year, is to launch his new company before the end of the year.

Freeform Dynamics is being positioned as "a new and different research and analysis organisation."

More to follow in a few weeks...

Arrival at Forrester

Forrester has bolstered its EMEA IT services team with the arrival of Euan Davis.

Previously with Yankee Group, Euan is joining Andrew Parker's team and will be looking after BPO.

Thanks to Kim Horner for the tip.