Services analysts are rapidly becoming major influencers in the telecoms and networking industries because they offer context and reassurance to managers in the business lines. It’s a strong parallel of the way that IBM has been one of the firms most trusted by telecoms analysts, despite not being a telecoms specialist. The snapshot below from our 2014 Analyst Value Survey shows the analyst firms most used by telecoms and networking people.
A specific measure of this is that HfS Research and Everest Group are two of the ten firms most used by telecoms and working people who have responded the survey. It’s a small difference from last year’s survey, where neither of those firms made the top ten for telecoms (of course the 2014 survey is still open so it might still change). However, the different is real and notable.
Of course one major reason for that is the rise of outsourcing in telecoms. Telecoms companies outsource IT, and telecoms companies are increasingly the firms that enterprises outsource to. And also there a big shift that everything is a service. Furthermore, users face broad challenges like cloud, big data and security. Services firms have a lot of say about that, and of course so do generalist analyst firms, some of whom are also now more influential than telecoms or networking specialists.
Needless to say, the other major change is that services analysts and advisory consultants are advising managers outside the ICT functions, and they are getting more influential in all purchasing.
This is certainly a complex trend, with any other factors driving it including the way analysts insight is diffused, but it’s certainly one to watch.
This post originally appeared on InfluencerRelations.com.
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