There’s trouble at t’ Ovum mill. Two of the firm’s star IT research directors, Gary Barnett and Ian Wesley, have left the firm.
Gary and Ian have been absolutely central to Ovum’s growth into IT analysis over the last decade. In the mid-1990s, Ovum was overwhelmingly a telecoms firm. Under Ian’s leadership, the IT team there met with repeated successes. Ian has many special qualities, including firm opinions on Arsenal, and I found him to be an impressive manager of analysts as well as a exemplary analyst. That’s a rare mixture. Gary is a dazzling technologist: a charming savant who built an igloo for his family one year when I visited them in New England. He justly commands great respect with his clients.
I don’t know if either of their departures is a surprise. Ian hopefully has done well from the sale of Ovum (even I can’t complain, as a modest Ovum shareholder). Gary’s next move will be interesting. Given their mutual love of high-tech sailing, perhaps he can strike a deal with T-Systems?
Over recent months Ovum has lost much of its IT services team, a line of business that only really existed after the purchase of Holway (excepting the work Katy Ring led on ASPs). The turn over there s massive and, as anyone going to holway.com can see, even Richard Holway is back in business (why Ovum didn’t think to use that domain name for itself, I don’t know). However, Gary and Ian reflect a deep base of skill on the IT side, which is a longer-established core area for Ovum.
We’ll be running a ‘Advisor Spotlight’ webinar on Datamonitor [Ovum’s owner] in mid-November. Expect more news about those businesses around then.
P.S. Some bright spark has emailed in to say that Gary should hook up with RedMonk. Although Gary is part of the UK rent-a-quote group, I think he should hang out for the highest offer.
P.P.S. Datamonitor has replied, on Ovum’s behalf, here.
