Gartner surprised by new competitors that steal enterprise clients – Looking ahead to 2010

This post is one in a series where SageCircle pulls out the crystal ball and looks ahead to what happens in the analyst ecosystem in 2010. See below for links to all posts in this series.

 Gartner is the dominant player in the analyst market with more than a 40% market share according to information market research firm Outsell, Inc. When it comes to the enterprise technology product and services buyer market (typically IT managers), Gartner extends this dominance to approximately 70% to 75% according to SageCircle estimates. If Gartner continues to execute as it has the last four years it will see its market share grow, even as the total market grows as well.

Gartner has achieved this dominance through both hard work and dumb luck. Hard work as represented by making more than 70 acquisitions since 1994, doubling the sales force since 2004 to nearly 1,000 representatives, and creating mindshare with recurring research deliverables like the Magic Quadrant, Hype Cycle, and Gartner Symposium. The dumb luck comes in the form of competitors that focus on vendors rather than end users, fail to build sales and marketing functions, and/or are complacent to the point of being Gartner’s implicit junior partner even though they have the resources to invest in more effective competition.

While there are no signs that Gartner is going to get lazy or stupid next year, 2010 might see its luck run out when it comes to ineffectual or complacent competition. SageCircle sees firms that bring attitude, business attributes, and wiliness to invest to the game unlike others in the past decade. Some examples include:

• Altimeter Group – While still tiny, with only four analyst/consultants, Altimeter Group has tremendous enterprise visibility and mindshare due to its principals’ exquisite exploitation of social media, conventional speaking opportunities, press quotes, and client contacts from their Forrester tenures. This market awareness should prove to be a significant lead generator that other more established analyst boutiques can only envy. It has made an important investment by starting to build a sales organization. Its current Achilles’ heel is that it is perceived as mostly a

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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