Highly recommended that you participate in the Gartner Quarterly AR Call – 9 September 2008

The topic we hear analyst relations (AR) professionals and other vendor staff talk the most about is Gartner. There is always something brewing about the Gartnerians’ business model, research methodology, product management and policies that gets under the skin of AR pros around the globe. While there is widespread feeling in the AR community that Gartner [...]

Accessible Expertise from SageCircle

Yankee analysts – Ovum and IDC are hiring

Update: 8/28/08 11:13 am PT – SageCircle has already forwarded contact information for four former Yankee analysts to analyst firms. If you are in contact with any former analysts please let them know about this free service.
SageCircle has been contacted – via Twitter - by IDC and Ovum indicating that they would be delighted to talk with [...]

Pyramid Research acquired by TechWeb’s Light Reading Communications Network

Updated 8/29/08 8:15 am PT – SageCircle’s Carter Lusher just completed a phone-based conversation with Light Reading PR manager Amy Averbook. As is often the case in M&A events, Amy is not permited to provide significant incremental information beyond the press release at this time. She did say that the Pyramid brand would be retained.
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Here is [...]

Are the vendor-centric analyst firms heading for tough times? Will end-user centric analyst firms do fine?

Forrester and Gartner both posted double digit gains in Q2FY08 while IDC and Yankee Group are laying off analysts. What’s up? 
One explanation might be the difference in client base composition of the two types of analyst firms. Forrester and especially Gartner get most of their revenues from end user clients and much less from vendors. [...]

Yankee Group official statement – List of analysts laid off

As SageCircle receives more information about which Yankee Group analysts have been caught in this reorganization we will add them to this list.
Updated: 8/28/08 9:05 am PT - Removed Nick Spencer from list per his request. According to Mr. Spencer: “left YG some weeks ago to take a position at RIM.”
Updated: 8/27/08 6:00 pm PT – [...]

Yankee Group reorganizes and lays off approximately 10% of analysts

SageCircle has learned that Yankee Group has initiated a round of analyst layoffs. At this time the exact number of staff and coverage is not known, but we have heard that 10% might be the size of the action. AR teams need to hope for the best for their favorite Yankee analysts, but plan for [...]

IIAR comes to the Silicon Valley

IMPORTANT UPDATE — LOCATION CHANGE –The IIAR meeting will be at the same date and time, but at a different location: Hewlett-Packard’s Palo Alto headquarters, the auditorium off the main lobby. 3000 Hanover Street, Palo Alto, CA 94304. Corner of Page Mill Road.
Since the beginning of the year, we have received periodic e-mails from members [...]

Executive sponsorship is critical success factor for a “Defending the Magic Quadrant” program

While we recommend that vendors don’t obsess over Gartner’s Magic Quadrant (MQ), it is also important that they realize that investing effort consistently between MQ refreshes will ensure that no nasty surprises pop up.
After we wrote in the SageCircle newsletter that vendors need to watch out for MQ complacency, especially if they are in the [...]

Spoon feed analysts public information

This should not have been a surprise to me, but I was shocked when I first started dealing with analysts as an analyst relations (AR) professional with the number of analysts who never bothered to check my company’s public information. Yeah, it was OK that they never read the marketing content on the website. But [...]

Bursts of analyst departures in a hot research area is not unusual

The clump of departures of social media analysts – Brian Haven, Peter Kim and Charlene Li (from Forrester), and Rachel Happe (from IDC) – is not at all unusual and follows typical patterns.
There are several reasons why analysts leave a firm: just want a change or new professional challenge, recruited by another company, desire to start [...]

Forrester loses third social media analyst – When do departures start to impact analysis and client service?

So, this is almost not news anymore – Forrester loses another social media analyst. In this case, Brian Haven (blog, Twitter handle) is leaving to join Peter Kim (see here for his departure news) at a startup. The other recent departure from Forrester’s social media research was Groundswell co-author Charlene Li (see here). The math [...]

Q&A from SageCircle’s “Introduction to Twitter for AR” webinar – Firm handles, retweet, protocols and more

At the four sessions of the “Introduction to Twitter for AR” webinar held in August, there were some interesting questions that came up. Here are answers to some of the questions.
Shameless Marketing – If you missed the webinar, you can schedule a SageCircle “AR Briefing” on Twitter for you and your colleagues. Click here for [...]

Got a problem analyst? Screaming won’t help.

That primal scream of frustration from the throats of many AR professionals often comes as a reaction to something that a “problem analyst” has said or done. Be it the killing of a promising sales deal or an uninformed but highly visible press quote, problem analysts can wreck havoc on the AR team’s plans and [...]

Why vendor top-of-mind presence is critical with analysts

On any day an IT and telecommunications industry analyst has the opportunity to verbally mention your company or products via micro-blogging and conversations or inquiries with a number of your key constituencies – customers, prospects, press, current and prospective partners, financial analysts, current and prospective employees – impacting their perception of your company.
Also on any [...]

A Vlog with David Fontaine on the Importance of Analysts

Here is a very nice video weblog (vlog) post by David Fontaine, Director of Corporate Communications at Inovis, discussing the role of the IT and telecommunications analysts.
While David does not say anything not already know to AR professionals, he presents the information in a very clear and matter-of-fact way. This could be a useful tool for AR [...]

Who are you? Analysts better make sure they are in the AR databases.

How do AR teams get the information for building and ranking analyst lists? How do they know the people claiming they are analysts really are analysts? In many cases, the AR professional will look it up in a commercially available AR database or contract with an AR services firm that has analyst list creation product.
Are [...]

Redmonk goes green with Greenmonk

Too often analyst relations (AR) professionals and analyst services buyers, both vendors and end user clients, focus on the larger firms. While this focus is natural because the larger firms have greater market presence and a large dedicated sales force, ignoring boutique analyst firms misses the opportunity to obtain interesting insights and advice or to [...]

People on the Move in Analyst Relations – PricewaterhouseCoopers

Tim Singer is now the Manager of analyst relations for PricewaterhouseCoopers. He formerly was in charge of analyst relations at IDS Scheer.
Please join me in congratulating Tim and wishing him great success in his new position.

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Are you or someone you know on the move? Please let us

Forrester analyst comments on Gartner research

While single practitioner analysts or analysts at boutiques will occasionally comment on the research done at the major firms (often in a snide tone), it is rare for an analyst at a major firm to acknowledge something from a major competitor. Forrester’s Jeremiah Owyang (Twitter handle, poster child for tech analysts using social media) does [...]

Using social media as a research tool is not the end all, be all even for social computing analysts

In another example of his radical transparency – at least for an analyst at a major firm – Jeremiah Owyang posted How crowdsourcing helps some – but not all research activities that discusses how he uses both social media-based and traditional Forrester research methodologies. It is an interesting read.
This post provides insights for analyst relations [...]

Non-analysts from firms on Twitter

There are Twittering non-analysts at analyst firms like AMR, Forrester and Gartner that SageCircle currently does not include in the Analyst Twitter Directory. These include public relations professionals and the Forrester AR Council team (who signed up for Twiter en masse earlier this week) . How should we treat these non-analyst staff?
One approach would be to have [...]

Time to Vote! SageCircle’s bracket now up on the PRWeek website

As we mentioned earlier in the week, SageCircle has been nominated to be part of PRWeek’s 10th Anniversary PR blog competition. Just getting nominated is a honor and we hope we can use this competition to highlight the value of PR and AR cooperating and collaborating. But we need your help! Please visit the PRweek [...]

Do you really want PR to own social media for your company?

Interesting post by Jason Falls on his Social Media Explorer blog: Social Media Is The Responsibility Of Public Relations.
Oh, really?
SageCircle believes that PR and AR – and other outbound communications functions – have different goals and techniques and each needs to address their tactics to their unique audiences.  This means that AR needs to voice [...]

SageCircle is in the PRWeek Blog Competition!

PRWeek is holding an interesting competition to have readers select their favorite blog. We are honored that SageCircle’s blog was nominated to be one of the 32 blogs. Yes, SageCircle concentrates on the analyst ecosystem and analyst relations (AR). However, the IT and telcomms analysts are an important resource for the technology and business press, [...]