IIAR Silicon Valley set for January 21st

Institute of Industry Analyst Relations (IIAR) cordially invites you to its 2010 kick-off meeting in Silicon Valley on Thursday, January 21, at Cisco’s headquarters in San Jose

Agenda:

• Trends in the Analyst Ecosystem – SageCircle
• IIAR Initiatives Update – IIAR board member Peggy O’Neill
• Cocktails and Networking – Hosted by Cisco

Event: Institute of Industry Analyst Relations 2010 Kickoff Meeting
Date: January 21, 2010
Time: 6:00 – 8:00 pm US PT
Location: Cisco HQs in the heart of Silicon Valley

RSVP to Peggy O’Neill (peggy.oneill@analystrelations.org) for address and details by January 15.

Trends in the Analyst Ecosystem: 2010 will be a Year of Accelerating Change

 by SageCircle

2009 was a brutal but not fatal year for the IT and telecommunications industry analysts. There were widespread layoffs at the firms, but no firms imploded. Mergers and acquisitions continued to be a tool for financially strong firms, but we also saw the launch of new firms to counter any consolidation. Social media adoption by analysts grew, but it was lumpy. These and other factors provided significant challenges to the analyst relations (AR) community, itself under pressure from the recession. Unfortunately, even though the analyst ecosystem is emerging from the recession, 2010 will provide no respite for AR. In fact, AR will have to deal with accelerating change.  We expect

Analyst Ecosystem News – Comings and goings, company news

Tip o’ the hat to the tipsters who provided us with the following tips. Most prefer to be anonymous.

 Arrivals:

Ptak, Noel & Associates – Mike Karp (email) joins Ptak, Noel covering storage and storage services.  Mike will be working out of offices in the Boston area.

Departures:

Freeform Dynamics – David Tebbutt (Twitter) covered social and environmental computing

Gartner – Jim Lundy (Twitter) covered social media has left for Saba (vendor)

Company News:

ARinsights enables users to view analyst photos on their smart phones. Using ARchitect™’s Outlook plugin, AR managers can quickly and easily create an Outlook contact that includes the analyst’s picture. This can be incredibly handy if you are

Highly recommended – Participating in the Gartner Quarterly AR Call on January 7, 2010

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 does not listen to us, we think that a productive use of an hour is participating in the Gartner Quarterly AR Call and telling the Gartner executives exactly what is on your mind. With a variety of GVPs and VPs participating, we think that AR pros should give these executives the benefit of the doubt that they will listen to well reasoned observations with positive suggestions about how to correct the situation. To register, click here.

This particular AR community will be a little more — and a little less – interesting than most. More interesting because the focus is on the details of how AMR is going to be integrated into Gartner (click here for a round up of SageCircle posts on the AMR acquisition by Gartner). Less interesting if AMR is not relevant to your AR program or if you are not an enterprise research client of AMR.

This particular call should also prove to be interesting to enterprise (aka end user) clients of AMR Research. While the focus is on issues of interest for AR professionals, enterprise clients of AMR should be able to pick up important intelligence about what is happening with their favorite AMR analysts and that could impact contract renewal decisions.

Replay of the webinar “SageCircle Analysis of Gartner’s acquisition of AMR Research” is now available. To receive a link and password to watch a streaming version of the webinar please email “info [at] sagecircle [dot] com”. Please include your job title and company name. Agenda:

• Basics of the deal
• SageCircle Analysis of AMR’s and Gartner’s Motivation
• Highlights from Gartner December 3rd AR Community Call
• Commentary on Points from Gartner AR Community Call
• Recommendations for Research Clients
  • Enterprise
  • Vendors
• Recommendations for Vendor AR Teams

—- Text from Gartner’s email —-

Dear Colleague:As promised during our

Gartner acquires AMR Research – roundup of posts

SageCircle has published a number of posts concerning the acquisition of AMR Research by Gartner, Inc. This blog post will be a convenient go-to place for a roundup of other SageCircle articles. The posts are listed in reverse chronological order.

In addition to this public information, SageCircle Advisory and Online SageContent Library received a SageFlash with deeper analysis and more recommendations. Furthermore, many clients used the event as the trigger for an inquiry with a SageCircle strategist to discuss the implication of AMR being swallowed up by Gartner.

1. Highly recommended – Participating in the Gartner Quarterly AR Call on January 7, 2010
2. Ovum ups the ante in campaign to recruit AMR analysts and sales representatives
3. Analyst departures start at AMR Research
4. Questions from the SageCircle webinar on Gartner’s acquisition of AMR Research
5. Special offers for AMR Research’s clients, sales professionals and analysts
6. Announcing the SageCircle free webinar on Gartner’s acquisition of AMR Research
7. Gartner Acquiries AMR Research for $64m

Replay of the webinar “SageCircle Analysis of Gartner’s acquisition of AMR Research” is now available. To receive a link and password to watch a streaming version of the webinar please email “info [at] sagecircle [dot] com”. Please include your job title and company name. Agenda:

• Basics of the deal
• SageCircle Analysis of AMR’s and Gartner’s Motivation
• Highlights from Gartner AR Community Call
• Commentary on Points from Gartner AR Community Call
• Recommendations for Research Clients
  • Enterprise
  • Vendors
• Recommendations for Vendor AR Teams

What should you do if one your top ranked analyst firms is involved in a merger & acquisition event?

M&A will be part of the analyst ecosystem in 2010 and beyond. Whenever there is a significant event in the analyst market, SageCircle clients receive an immediate SageFlash with analyis and recommendations on the steps research consumers and AR should do. In addition, Advisory clients can schedule a phone-based inquiry to discuss how to apply these steps to their particular situation. We can do individual calls as well as a teleconference for an enterprise’s or vendor’s entire team.
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Non-clients can quickly and easily sign up for a two-hour Advisory Hour Block for only $495. Please give SageCircle a call at 503-636-1500 if you want to discuss the implications of this layoff.

The evolution of the IT analyst industry – a fireside chat

Focusing on the IT analyst business, its beginnings and weaknesses in the original model bringing technology and business together over the course of the last 20 years.

Panelists: Jonathan Yarmis with Gideon Gartner and Carter Lusher

Click here or on the graphic to play the video

SageCircle AR Podcast for December 15, 2009

The AR podcast is a review of the latest news and trends in the analyst ecosystem along with tips and tricks for analyst relations professionals and analyst research consumers. SageCircle strategists Dave Eckert and Carter Lusher co-host this bi-weekly program. You can find all the SageCircle podcasts on our podcast page.

Visit the podcast page to download the MP3 file or listen to the episodes on your computer.  Click here to subscribe to the podcast within iTunes

SCP 15: Table of contents. Numbers in parentheses refer to minutes:seconds when the article starts within the podcast.

[00:00]  Opening

[01:06]  News – Gartner acquires AMR Research

[09:10]  How likely is it that Gartner will retain AMR analysts and sales representatives

[14:37]  Interview with Datamonitor-Ovum Research Fellow Jonathan Yarmis about his role

[21:06]  How the new Datamonitor-Ovum will encourage collaboration between

Ovum ups the ante in campaign to recruit AMR analysts and sales representatives

Tip o’ the hat to the tipsters who sent in information about this Ovum news

Updated 12/16/09 1:32 pm PT – Added photo of truck outside Gartner’s HQ

Here is the Ovum truck making the rounds around Gartner main offices on Top Gallant Road in Stamford, CT (click on the picture to enlarge). Carter’s office use to be on the second floor nearest Top Gallant Road. Carter says that this truck would be quite visible from any of the window offices.

Please read the comments below. A Guerilla Billboards staffer mentions that a member of Gartner’s legal team came out and told the driver to get lost. Interesting.

As SageCircle reported in Special offers for AMR Research’s clients, sales professionals and analysts Ovum is one of the firms that is making a play for AMR’s sales and analyst staff. This is a common tactic by competing firms immediately after the announcement of a sizeable acquisition. However, offers like these do not necessarily result in the pickup of key staff because there is little effort put into the campaign. Usually there is just an announcement on the poaching firms’ websites and maybe a few phone calls to staff at the targeted firm.

Ovum has demonstrated that it is willing to increase the stakes by actually investing in getting the attention of the staff at the targeted firm. SageCircle has received reports about the rolling billboard that Ovum put on the streets of Boston to circle the Gartner and AMR Research offices (see picture). While this technique is likely a modest expense it does demonstrate that Ovum is serious about expanding its presence in the US market where it has a relatively small presence. In addition, it is a nifty publicity stunt sure to get some notice.

This development could work to the advantage of enterprises and vendors looking to wrap up contracts before