Cisco launches AR blog

It's great to see Cisco has started an AR blog as part of its analyst outreach. Find it here.

In the first post, Skip MacAskill - director, industry analyst relations - explains the reasons for introducing it:

"We have developed this site to interact with industry influencers and thought leaders on key industry wide trends and issues as well as Cisco-related technologies, markets and customer segments...Incorporating different media and communications tools into our AR program provides our industry analysts, customers, partners, and other interested communities the opportunity to interact and share ideas in new ways."

A reminder about Yankee and the next IIAR meeting

As so many of my fellow AR bloggers have already said, we're delighted to have Yankee Group presenting at next week's IIAR Forum.

Camille Mendler, vice president of the Enterprise Research group, and Ajay Sule, senior regional vice president for international sales, will join us for the meeting which is taking place at Hill & Knowlton's offices in London on 26 July (thank you Dom).

It should be an interesting session. Yankee is best known in Europe for its work in the telecoms space but outside of that arena doesn't really have a profile. There are continued rumours flying around about it expanding into other areas over here or retrenching back into telecoms in the US.

I for one am looking forward to hearing how the company is planning to develop itself. With the continued trend towards consolidation, where and how does Yankee see itself fitting into the market in the future?

The meeting is open to all IIAR members. We also have a few places available for guests - please contact IIAR secretary Hannah Kirkman for more information.

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Note: For anyone not familar with us, the IIAR (Institute of Industry Analyst Relations) is an organisation dedicated to raising industry awareness of the value of analyst relations, promoting and sharing best practice in AR, enhancing communications between vendors and analyst firms, and providing opportunities for AR professionals to meet and network with their industry peers.

The IIAR draws its membership from a broad spectrum of AR practitioners including vendors, AR consultants and training providers.

I am a board member along with Duncan Chapple, David Taylor, Ludovic Leforestier and Susanne Huebner.

And it's official - Informa does indeed acquire Datamonitor

See here or here for the official announcement.

The chief exec at Informa, David Gilbertson, is quoted as saying: "Datamonitor is a model example of a company that slots neatly into Informa...Both companies provide customers with data and analysis that is essential and unique - information they cannot do without. As part of the Informa group we believe Datamonitor will be able to market to our 20 million-strong contact database, take part in our 10,000+ events each year and use our global sales infrastructure across 43 countries. Combining the businesses will enhance growth prospects and margins."

Still no mention of why this acquisition is a good thing for the customer. Perhaps that's taken for granted.

Informa and Datamonitor - will the acquisition go through?

The Informa offer closes at 1pm today (13 July 2007) so we'll find out soon enough but to me it's starting to look like a done deal.

There were some doubts creeping in last month though. Back on 25 June, Informa had valid acceptances from just 22.1 per cent of the Datamonitor shares - but that's when the Datamonitor share price was sitting way above the offer price, hitting a peak of 680.50p. Investors were either looking for Informa to boost its bid or hoping to see a third-party enter the fray.

Now with the Datamonitor share price sitting at 642.50p this morning (9.55am BST), that 650p offer from Informa has got to be looking a lot more attractive.

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Note: In no way am I offering any financial investment advice!

There's something annoying about analyst firms that...

There's something annoying about analyst firms that insist you fill in a briefing request form because they want to capture lots of information for their sales force to use.

An example we saw today asked for all this detail (alongside the normal stuff I expect):

Company Overview:
- Core competence:
- Value proposition:
- Organizational structure:
- Financial performance:

Market Position:
- Market environment:
- Drivers & Business issues:
- Target markets:
- Profile installed base:
- Competitive differentiation:

Capabilities:
- Products & Services:
- Sales Channel:
- Customer benefits:
- Success stories:

Vision for the Future:

What are the top three issues the company is facing:


Does the analyst really need to know all this before deciding whether or not to take a briefing? I'd suggest not.

Compare it with what Gartner and Forrester ask for - that's much more reasonable and sensible.

Thoughts on Informa and Datamonitor

Yesterday we had the news that Informa is to acquire Datamonitor. As Dom says, this is the “biggest industry analyst story of the year so far.”

What can we read into this purchase?

Informa is a provider of specialist information and services for a variety of academic, scientific, professional and commercial business communities. A firm like Datamonitor fits nicely into its business model.

However, I don’t think we should start to get excited about Informa suddenly becoming a significant rival to Gartner in the technology research and advisory business (at least not in the traditional manner, but more on that later*).

First, the numbers don’t stack up. Last year, Gartner had revenues of $1 billion (USD). Even without consulting, its revenue is still over $700 million.

In comparison, Informa may have revenues of over £1 billion (GBP) but technology research isn’t that big a part of its business.

In 2006, Informa’s telecoms and media products (ie its technology offering) had revenues of £64.7 million. That’s everything – events, magazines and newsletters, and research services.

Datamonitor will bring in some additional technology revenue – but its total revenue in 2006 was £70.4 million and a significant part of that isn’t from technology research.

When you start doing the sums (even allowing for the dollar / pound exchange rate), then Informa’s technology analyst business is going to be a whole smaller than Gartner’s. (Although, interestingly, it’ll be of a similar size to Forrester’s – again, exchange rates permitting).

And it's not just the money. Informa’s existing research business specialises in the telecoms and media markets. By acquiring Datamonitor (and Ovum and Butler and Computerwire), it is broadening its coverage out – but it’s still got some way to go before it can effectively compete with Gartner’s breadth and depth of coverage of the technology sector.

If Informa plans to build an analyst business of a scale to rival Gartner, then there’s a lot of growth needed. Some of that must be organic but acquisitions will have to play a part too. Think Forrester and Yankee for example, perhaps with some boutique firms thrown in to provide coverage of more specialist market niches.

But I think we need to consider whether this is Informa’s plan at all.

Both Informa and Datamonitor have successful businesses outside of technology research. There’s plenty of low-hanging fruit that can be gathered as a result of this acquisition. And most of it’s not in the technology analyst market.

* There is another side to this acquisition that potentially poses a more interesting long-term challenge to those of us in the analyst relations market. I’ve got to go out now so that will have to wait - probably tomorrow.

Informa to buy Datamonitor

So, yet more consolidation in the analyst world with the news today about Informa's planned acquisition of Datamonitor. Informa is set to pay £502 million.

You can see the announcement on both sites, Informa and Datamonitor.

The FT is reporting that "Michael Danson, chief executive of Datamonitor, will remain in post for 12 months...The future management structure will be decided over the next six months but Datamonitor will remain a standalone company and its brand will be retained."

The Telegraph has Danson saying that "the deal was principally about revenue synergies, not cost savings...most jobs at Datamonitor, aside from the finance director and a few non-executive directors, were likely to remain safe."

Thanks to Jonny.

Gideon Gartner to speak at Computer History Museum

Gideon Gartner, a pioneer of the industry analyst marketplace and founder of both Gartner and Giga, is speaking at the Computer History Museum in California later this month.

The event on Tuesday May 15 is being described as "an evening of candid and personal insights on the rise of IT industry analysts."

Gideon's conversation with venture capitalist Neill Brownstein is being recorded and will be made available on YouTube.

Event Details
Date: May 15 2007
Time: 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm
Venue: Computer History Museum, 1401 N. Shoreline Boulevard Mountain View, CA 94043

Entrance is free although there's a suggested donation of $10. Advanced registration is being strongly advised.

If you're interested, there's more information here.

Thanks to Barbara French over at Tekrati who will be writing more on this event at her blog. She has also set up a related wiki.

She's describing it as "a "don't miss" event for everyone who works with / for the industry analysts."

About the Computer History Museum
Established in 1996, the aim of the Computer History Museum aim is "to preserve and present for posterity the artifacts and stories of the information age. As such, the Museum plays a unique role in the history of the computing revolution and its worldwide impact on the human experience...It is a public benefit organization dedicated to the preservation and celebration of computing history. It is home to one of the largest collections of computing artifacts in the world, a collection comprising over 13,000 objects, 20,000 images, 5,000 moving images, 4,000 linear feet of cataloged documentation and 5,000 titles or several hundred gigabytes of software."

Forrester speaking at Institute of Industry Analyst Relations meeting

A quick heads-up. Forrester Research will be speaking at next week's IIAR (Institute of Industry Analyst Relations) meeting.

Our guest speakers are David Metcalfe, senior vice-president, research (the man who manages Forrester's research organisation in Europe) and Kevin Lucas, senior analyst (whose research interests include best practice for AR professionals).

The meeting is taking place on 17 May in London. There are still a few spaces available so if you would like to find out more, please contact me or the IIAR secretary, Hannah Kirkman (her contact details are here). There's also information on our Yahoo! group.

Previous IIAR meetings have provided incredibly valuable opportunities to meet, listen to and have discussions with senior executives at the big analyst firms.

As well as Forrester, our speakers this year have included Peter Sondergaard, senior vice-president of research for Gartner, and Tim Royston-Webb, managing director of Datamonitor's technology business).

Off-topic / A day in the life of a typical PR consultant

I just loved this post from ....the world's leading....

Read it and weep - with laughter - knowning it's true and happens to some poor soul every week of the year.