Steve Hotham, currently
MD of Ovum, has been appointed as
CEO of the new company. He was kind enough to talk me through
what’s happening.
A new company but an established brand
“The first thing is that the new merged company is to retain
the Ovum name. We talked it through internally at
Ovum and
ITM
and decided it’s better to use the Ovum name because it’s a stronger and more unique
brand in the market than ITM. It also means we’ve avoided any confusion between
us and the parent company which might have happened if we’d used the Informa
name in the brand,” said Steve
As a result, the ITM research brand is being retired
immediately (although Ovum is still part of the Informa Telecoms & Media group
within Informa plc).
The new Ovum has two divisions: Telecoms &
Media and IT. It employs 180 analysts, out of a total staff of 275,
and has 23 offices worldwide – in the UK, mainland Europe, Africa, Asia,
Australasia, the US and Latin America.
Among its research and consulting clients, it counts 90% of
the top tier telcos, 15 of the top 20 media companies, 25 of the top 30 tech
vendors and nine of the top 10 management consultancies.
Strength in-depth across IT, telecoms and media
Steve said: “The group is investing in us so we can come to
market as a brand new company. This isn’t just about adding Ovum to
ITM or vice versa. We’ve gone back to basics. We’ve analysed the
markets we serve. We’ve improved every single telecoms and media
service we sell, as well as many IT services, and we're designing new products
to meet market needs.”
It’s obvious that Steve and his team see the new company
being a much more powerful force in the market than either of the old
individual Ovum or ITM businesses.
Steve explains: “This merger has been driven by a
vision. Combining Ovum and ITM enables us to offer the most comprehensive and
in-depth telecoms research service available worldwide.”
In fact, with 90 analysts, Ovum now claims to have more
people in its telecoms team than any other analyst firm.
But it’s not just about telecoms and media. “We
have spent a lot of time getting to the bottom of what’s unique about us.
It’s that we connect IT, media and telecoms in a way that no-one else can,”
says Steve.
“We are now one of a handful of analyst companies, if not
the only one, that researches all three markets in-depth. We can advise on each market individually but
more than this, we are also very well placed to advise companies on the
convergence of these three markets.”
A telecoms powerhouse
Richard Mahony, who was director of telecoms research and analysis
at the old Ovum, and is now becoming telecoms research director for the new Ovum
joined Steve on the call last week.
Both of them wanted to make it clear that the merger of the
Ovum and ITM telecoms teams makes good business sense, describing the two as
complementary rather than competitive.
Richard said: “If you overlaid Ovum’s areas of strength on
those of ITM, it was a good fit with very little overlap.
“Ovum’s strength was in providing strategic qualitative
information while ITM’s specialism was quantitative information. Put
them together and it’s a powerful package that only a few other analyst firms
can offer.”
Richard was also quick to point out “Some companies used
research from both companies but they bought different types of services so
there’s little risk of sales cannibalisation. In fact, there’s now a
strong opportunity for us to cross-sell services between our unique customer
sets.”
IT is a core Ovum service
We talked about the IT business too. Steve wanted
to squash one story that's been circulating: “The rumour that we’re
selling Ovum’s IT business is untrue. We’re continuing to grow in
this area. Don’t forget, we see our USP as connecting IT,
media and telecoms in a way that no other research firm can. We are
not interested in selling either of the IT or the Telecoms & Media
businesses.”
This was reinforced when I spoke with
Ian Charlesworth, MD
for the new IT business (and previously director of IT research and analysis at
the old Ovum).
“The convergence of IT and telecoms gives us a great
opportunity. For example, telcos are
looking at how they can become IT service providers and we’re seeing enterprise
software companies providing technology solutions which were previously the
domain of specialist telco software firms. From the buy-side, there’s no longer
any separation between enterprise IT and telecommunication. Enterprise IT
managers simply need to manage their technology portfolio of infrastructure,
applications, and data.
“To provide complete research on this converging world, you
need to understand the two sectors from both dimensions. For us, there’s real
synergy and a significant competitive differentiator to have strong teams
covering both sectors. Our IT team
couldn’t do such a good job without our telco team and vice versa.”
Ian explained that the IT and telco teams are already
working together on some topics which sit across both markets. “Think of subjects like the Internet of
Things, BYOD and cloud computing. We’re bringing the IT and telco teams together
to collaborate so we go out to customers with a single, comprehensive product. It’s hard work but the results are stronger
and it differentiates us from other analyst firms.”
Steve is also clear that he and Ian have spent a lot of time
re-evaluating the IT business and understanding its key strengths: “We have refocused and are positioning
ourselves around those strengths. We have a lot of expertise in
certain emerging technology segments and intend to be seen as leaders in those
areas.”
Ian picked up the same thread: “There are four main areas where we want to
focus on being market leader and we’ve been focused on these areas since the
second half of last year.”
These are:
- Customer Engagement (including contact centre, customer data
management, customer analytics, social media and digital marketing)
- Information Management (including big data, analytics and
business intelligence, and data visualisation)
- Enterprise Mobility and Productivity (a range of workplace technologies
including BYOD, mobile device management, collaboration tools, and BPM)
- Infrastructure Modernization (covers everything that IT
departments use to manage their IT estate, e.g. provisioning of IT services,
cloud services, application development, IT security)
Ian continued: “This
helps with our vertical perspective as well. We’re able to take this horizontal
expertise and look at how these technologies are being applied in our target
vertical industries – e.g. retail banking, education, public sector, oil and
gas, and of course telecoms. It’s
another example of differentiation though intelligent collaboration.”
Investment from Informa
Evaluation and planning of the merger has been
underway for one year and the integration of Ovum and ITM is almost complete. The companies
are expected to be fully merged by the end of May.
The last thing to happen will be the launch of a new
Knowledge Centre, the primary way in which clients will access Ovum’s research
online.
All research products are being carried over to the new
knowledge centre with new ones also being introduced.
These include World View, a new service which brings
together telecoms and media data sets such as WCIS (World Cellular Information
Service), WBIS (World Broadband Information Service) and WTVIS (World
Television Information Service). In telecoms, Ovum now
provides the most in-depth KPIs available for 200 countries and has detailed
forecast coverage available for 67 countries.
New products will also cover Enterprise Services Technology,
aimed at telcos looking at the IT services market, as well as digital media and
digital music.
Two new divisions
The Telecoms & Media division, led by
Martin Hill (who
was
MD of ITM), employs 108 analysts. 90 of these work in telecoms
and 18 in media.
Richard Mahony (from Ovum) is research director for telecoms
and
Rob Gallagher is research director for media and entertainment.
Mark Newman is chief research officer and
Nick Jotischky is consulting
director. The latter three are all from ITM.
There are 72 analysts in the IT division, led by Ian
Charlesworth (who was director of IT research and analysis for Ovum). His
leadership team all come from Ovum, which is unsurprising as ITM didn’t cover
the IT market.
Steve didn’t deny there had been some redundancies but
wouldn't go into detail. He explained: “Naturally, when you bring companies
together there’s some duplication of roles. However in such cases, we are
trying to redeploy people and make sure any redundancies are minimal.
Plus we’ve also been hiring new people in our fastest growth areas such as media
and entertainment. Overall, the staffing numbers in the new company are
not significantly changing from the old Ovum and ITM businesses combined.”
A global boutique
Ian Charlesworth gets the last word: “We have the strengths of the specialist –
our focus on customers, our flexibility, our agility. Combined with these, we
have all the advantages of a large provider - global scale, certified and
consistent research methodologies, in-depth data assets and insights.
“Think of Ovum IT as a global boutique. No one else combines
the advantages of a large provider with the focus of a specialist. That’s what
our customers told us they wanted so that’s what we've done.”
Footnote:
The Informa Telecoms & Media research business (ITM)
referred to in my blog is separate from the Informa Telecoms & Media Group,
even though they share the same name.
Both ITM and Ovum were part of the Informa Telecoms &
Media Group, which is run by Ian Hemming. The new Ovum company now sits
in this group, and Steve reports to Ian.
Personal note:
It was generous of Steve, Richard and Ian to make time to
speak to me about the merger. My thanks to them. Thanks
also to Ovum’s PR manager
Claire Booty who arranged the calls.
This is the first of two blogs that I’m working on this week
about the Ovum and ITM merger. The second will be published in a few
days and will contain more of my views and analysis.
