Analysys Research, the telecoms market intelligence and analysis business of Analysys Mason Group, has hired Tony Lavender as Managing Director and Jason Kowal as its US head.
As mentioned this week, Lavender’s departure from Ovum was agreed half a year ago and reflects the Analysys Mason Group’s continuing commitment to its business mix. This hybrid firm was formed through the 2004 merger of Cambridgeshire-headquartered Analysys with Mason Group, a UK consultancy (and Lighthouse client). Mason has an established reputation for consultancy services focused on communications system design and management. The Group has expanded further to include Catalyst, a CRM consultancy.
The group’s overall goal is to become the premiere global telecoms consulting business: the ability to leverage Analysys’s research and advisory services is clearly an asset for them. However, the group also also been careful to separate out the brands, and to keep a difference between Analysys Research and Analysys Consulting, in order to minimise any perceived conflict of interest (The business is not related to Analysys International, a high-profile Chinese sometime partner of Gartner and Yankee Group).
The addition of Kowal and Lavender shows the continuing success for Analysys. Our estimate is that Analysis now has around 160 staff, making it a slim majority of the Analysys Mason Group as a whole.
Tony Lavender will be a key factor in Analysys‘ future success. His career has spanned 18 years at British Telecom, a spell at OFTEL, the communications regulator, and several years at Ovum. As chief research officer at Ovum, he led a $26 million business spanning telecoms, IT and services. However, a key challenge for Lavender will be to accelerate Analysys‘ growth both internationally and into new coverage areas. Lavender follows another veteran Ovum telecoms analyst, Teresa Cottam, who is an Associate at Analysys.
Jason Kowal is therefore a highly strategic hire for Analysys. As well as leading the growth of the research business in the US, he will initiate new service areas for the firm. Kowal was formerly president of TeleGeography, a long established research house best known for primary metrics on telecoms markets. Interestingly, Analysys emphasise that Kowal led TeleGeography through merger & acquisition successes, first with bandwidth exchange Band-X in 2000 and later with PriMetrica in 2003.
P.S. Therese Cory is another Ovum alumnus now working at Analysys.
