Morgan Chambers acquired by EquaTerra

Action in the sourcing advisory arena today with EquaTerra's acquisition of Morgan Chambers.

You can read the press release here. The Houston Business Journal adds some additional comment.

This is big news - at least for those in the outsourcing and IT services space. Both firms are substantial players in the 'third party advisor' (TPA) market. The Black Book of Outsourcing 2007 names EquaTerra as the leading provider in the IT Outsourcing market while Morgan Chambers holds the same position in BPO.

As the two firms have different approaches to the market - EquaTerra takes an industry view while Morgan Chambers is more focused on countries - it'll be interesting to see how these are brought together. If done well, it will most likely result in a powerful approach that could easily spark further consolidation as others in the market try not to get left behind.

And there's plenty of competition around. TPI* says it is the largest sourcing advisory firm in the world (a claim not challenged by EquaTerra in the press release; instead it uses phrases like "market leading" and "advisory firm of choice").

Then think of other specialists like Everest, NeoIT and Alsbridge, the big management consultancy firms and even traditional analyst firms in the shape of Gartner Consulting, Ovum's Orbys and, increasingly, NelsonHall.

The power of the TPA has long been apparent to those AR professionals working in the IT services and outsourcing sector. In this market, they are far more important commercially than the industry analysts - although they do lack the 'rounded' influence that the typical industry analyst is capable of delivering.

(As background, there was a fascinating conversation back in late 2005 over here at ARmadgeddon on the relative importance of analysts v TPAs. Make sure to read the comments by HP's Carter and ex Gartner analyst, Vinnie!)

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* It's an interesting side-step to remember that less than two years ago, EquaTerra was planning a merger with TPI. Just a few months later, this deal was terminated by 'mutual consent'.

Hurwitz executive joins Quocirca

Fran Howarth has joined Quocirca as a principal analyst. Fran was previously a partner on the executive team at Hurwitz.

At Quocirca, she's going to be covering "emerging technologies and business models" which sounds wonderfully vague. More specifically, her areas of coverage are going to be supply chain and lifecycle management, information management, security and asset management.

Fran's appointment should give Quocirca additional coverage of some important market sectors. Sharon Crawford already covers supply chain as part of her enterprise solutions remit while Bob Tarzey has carved out a niche for himself in the IT security space alongside his core focus on 'route to market'.

The beauty of Quocirca (indeed, of many of the boutique firms) is that they deliberately set out to avoid the silo mentality practiced by some of their bigger rivals. In a market that is continually consolidating and converging (and sometimes colliding) it's always good to see an analyst firm recognise that the old divides in the ICT industry are no longer as relevant as they once were.

Quocirca's continued expansion backs up recent conversations I've had with the firm. Business is good and there's a lot of confidence about the future.

In the meantime, what does this mean for Hurwitz? The company's never had much profile over on this side of the Atlantic, choosing instead to partner with Bloor Research in the UK as a means of providing European coverage to its clients.

Fran was Hurwitz's only 'local' European analyst and we suspect she won't be replaced. Instead, we expect to see Hurwitz focus on developing its relationship with Bloor Research (especially given that Robin Bloor is a partner at Hurwitz as well as being chief research officer with Bloor).

Matt Hatton leaves Yankee Group

Farewell to Matt Hatton who covers the consumer wireless market in EMEA for Yankee Group. Today is his last day there.

He's jumping the fence and joining the mobile operator 3 UK in a market intelligence role. All the best in the new role Matt.

(We've also heard rumours that two new analysts are likely to be joining Yankee in September - one of whom is the long awaited replacement for Nick McQuire who left the enterprise team earlier this year to join BT).

IDC to speak at IIAR meeting in September

We're delighted to have IDC as our guest speaker at the IIAR (Institute of Industry Analyst Relations) meeting in September.

With Martin Hingley, (chief research officer, EMEA) and Steven Frantzen (group VP, CEMA and general manager, EMEA research) joining us, we have two senior executives coming along. I'm sure that once again, it'll be an interesting time.

The meeting is taking place on 20 September in central London.

Meetings are open to all IIAR members. We also have a limited number of guest places available.

Please do contact IIAR secretary Hannah Kirkman if you'd like to find out more. She can be reached here.

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FYI, I am a board member of the IIAR.

John Chambers of Cisco on the value of industry analysts (1.40 min video)

This short video clip is well worth watching.

John Chambers, chairman and CEO of Cisco explains why he talks to analysts - and how his reasons have changed over the past five years.

Click here to see the clip. It's embedded in the post titled "Why C-Scape?"

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.