On December 17 we ran a webinar to take a closer look at Pierre Audoin Consultants (PAC). Close watchers of the services industry will need no introduction to PAC, one of Europe’s oldest industry analyst firms. The sort of projects it wins are instructive: it has been appointed by the EC to lead a consortium…
It was the best of Gartner; it was the worst of Gartner. It was the AR Forum of wisdom; it was the AR Forum of foolishness. Analyst Relations managers crowded into the Boardwalk on October 20 for Gartner’s annual session for the AR community. It’s a valuable session, and much of the slideware will be…
The annual Gartner Symposium/ITxpo has a rather different air about it this year: numbers are down (I hear there are around 5,000 people although it always feels smaller to me than the stated numbers), heads are down and the dress code’s had a real turn towards the formal (It’s first year when I feel I’m…
By launching the first independent Analyst Relations Certification (ARC) scheme, the Institute for Industry Analyst Relations (IIAR) has brought the analyst relations community hugely forward. Before today, there were two three organisations offering certification in analyst relations: Lighthouse offered a professional development certificate to AR managers who passed our ten week webinar course; KCG offered…
Impact of social media is overestimated in the short-term and overestimated in the long-term: what was the message from the Oxford Social Media Conference last week. I was lucky to be invited to the event, held at its Said Business School. Thinking over the day, and especially comments by Richard Sambrook, I think the four…
Duncan Chapple’s webinar on Gartner ended with a powerful discussion between participants on the company’s strategy. This memorandum summarises some of the comments made in the webinar presentation and discussion. Because we follow the Chatham House rule, the note doesn’t attribute particular comments to particular participants. The memorandum should not be taken as a reflection…
Last week’s meeting of the IIAR invited a delegation from Datamonitor, including John Leigh, who heads the tech research at Datamonitor and its Ovum and Butler brands, and David Mitchell (who has a similar role as the new Research Fellow). John couldn’t make it, but Datamonitor CEO Mark Meek and David Mitchell gave a spirited…
Since our December survey we’ve seen increasing numbers of AR teams trying to move away from tracking their own efforts and trying to see how they are moving relative to their competitors. In the recession mood which still influences many buyers, analysts continue to play a market-shaping role. Clients, not technologies, are increasingly at the…