Earlier this week Ovum’s shareholders (of whom I probably have the smallest holding) voted to move ahead with the plans to IPO. It’s been interesting to hear opinions, both from those who are informed and from those who are guessing. Some things are clear: Ovum is growing at 25% and is increasingly profitable. The rumours…
Last October, after Hyperion hired Howard Dresner, we asked what happens when a competitor hires the analyst who follows your firm. Generally, not many analysts want to move into an analyst relations role (see Richard‘s comment) and not every analyst thinks former analysts make good AR people (See James’ opinion). So it was no surprise…
ARmadgeddon has some comments about criticisms of share of voice analysis. This is a topic that we have written about both recently and a few years ago in our white paper on Measuring the effectiveness of analyst relations outreach. Furthermore, we also have to admit to an interest here: We have two similar services (the…
I’ve just been writing a précis of an interesting report contrasting the analyst relations performance of super-sized technology businesses. While the findings are useful for any large $10bn-plus business with multiple divisions, the report uses desk research to estimate the strategies of firms like General Electric; IBM; Microsoft; Philips and Siemens (the report’s author had…
InformationWeek’s Larry Greenemeier and Paul McDougall have written to suggest that the growing contradiction between analyst firm’s obligations to vendors and to buyer is subject to a uncomfortable conspiracy of silence. They are, in our opinion, largely right and slightly wrong. Certainly, there is a lot that happens in the relationship between analyst firms and…
Cross-cultural issues loom large in the AR teams of most multinationals, and there is an interesting discussion on whether the German offices of US firms are closer to the German culture than to the US culture. That’s an interesting discussion, and one usefully illustrated by examples. For example, I recently visited the large German offices…
MWD Advisors’ annoucement of two “key partners” in its growth strategy have us scratching our heads. They seem to divert rather than amplify the firm’s focus. This boutique firm principally follows IT infrastructure issues from a management perspective. Its research covers topics including SOA, SLAs and the associated offers of vendors like BEA, CA, Cisco,…
Jon Collins, formerly Quocirca’s Principal Analyst, has been hired by Ovum breakout MWD Advisors. MWD recently took an interesting step by putting its research under Creative Commons, making their work free for non-commercial use (what ever that means). In their opinion, if you’re not a leading research firm [by revenues] then few firms really want…