Zimmermann launches Techra.com

Jim Zimmermann is back with his Techra brand.

Jim founded, edited, and published the Analyst Views web site and Weekly Report. He’s gone through a pile of different business cards along the way: he sold the site to Bitpipe back in 2003. TechTarget bought Bitpipe in late 2004. Then TechTarget sold off Analyst Views and Analyst Direct to Northern Light this summer. At the time of the sale to Northern Light, Jim left to start re-start his own business. he says his goal is tracking the views of over 400 analyst firms… but it seems to us that even listing them is a start.

His new venture is Techra (short for Technology Research Associates) and the web site is www.techra.com. The site features free access to his Technology and Industry Briefs and Consensus Reports – including the popular IT Spending Predictions Roundup. Jim’s Briefs and Reports compare and contrast the opinions of multiple analyst firms on the same topic (Firms like Lighthouse also do that, but such research is only for major clients). Reports like these documents save spokespeople and AR professionals the time they would otherwise spend reading through dozens of lengthy reports.

There is also a free directory of over 430 IT and Telecom analyst firms – Jim says it’s the largest and most complete directory that is freely available (unlike the detailed subscriber-only analyst databases available in the AR Intranet and ARchitect).

Jim says the directory is also searchable – so a search on UK and CRM should return a list of UK-based analyst firms that cover CRM. It didn’t quite work out that way when we tried it: we got all firms where the words UK or CRM appear. We hope that he wins enough paying customers to allow him to afford advanced search features.

Duncan Chapple

Duncan Chapple is the preeminent consultant on optimising international analyst relations and the value created by analyst firms. As SageCircle research director, Chapple directs programs that assess and increase the business value of relationships with industry analysts and sourcing advisors.