David Rossiter’s take on an early post at the Old Towers. Parallels can be drawn between the PR sector and the analyst sector ie a polarisation between really big firms and smaller, more focussed operators – the equivalent of the "individual" brand cited.
http://analystinsight.blogspot.com/2005/06/challenges-and-benefits-of-changing.html
Challenges (and benefits) of a changing analyst market
Andrew Smith’s got an interesting post (http://www.bloglines.com/blog/andismit?id=189)
about the publications that IT decision-makers actually read. It’s not
always what you would expect (in fact they seem to read very few IT
titles, if any at all).
It’s focused me on writing about some of
the changes that are happening with the industry analysts and some of
the questions that we’re currently in the midst of answering.
Everyday,
we’re now actively engaged in challenging our own perceptions on the
relative importance of analyst firms and individual analysts. We are
constantly forcing ourselves to re-examine who has what knowledge and
influence, how that is applied and how we can best help our clients
make use of it.
We ask ourselves if Gartner’s increasing size
will actually result in an equal increase in influence. We don’t think
so. There will be an increase but not in a straight line proportion.
There will also be some kind of backlash over its increasing dominance
and the prices it charges.
We ask ourselves if there will be
more consolidation among the likes of AMR, Forrester, Ovum and Yankee
Group? Yes, because whether it’s true or not, these companies are
likely to believe they have to get bigger to effectively compete
against Gartner for influence in the end-user market.
We ask ourselves if we will see the smaller analyst firms such as Quocirca (www.quocirca.com), Macehiter Ward-Dutton (www.mwdadvisors.com) and Redmonk (www.redmonk.com)
gain more influence? Yes, because we believe firms are increasingly
buying people rather than (as well as?) companies. Watch out for the
rise of the ‘individual’ brand in the analyst market.
We’re
witnessing some interesting times in the IT industry analyst market at
the moment. The changes will not make the AR job any easier in the
short-term but it’s forcing us to re-examine how influence works in the
IT sector. It’s also helping us get to understand how the role of the
industry analyst is being re-defined.