Do vendors pay analysts to say what they want them to say? Not normally. Vendor support for the analyst community is substantial: many obtain more revenue from vendors than from users. Most analyst houses cannot have their opinions bought, but few have clear policies to help explain it. Uncritical research stands out sharply and will often…
Changes in business have driven the growing revenue and authority of ICT industry analysts. Four distinct stages reflect the several factors that have defined this success. For much of the late 20th century, we had the “old normal”, in which IT followed the business. In the “dot.com” boom of 1998-2000, IT attempted to be the…
Lawrence Hecht, formerly an analyst at 451 Research/TheInfoPro, offers this response to Phil Fersht’s recent contribution to our post opposing Federal regulation of analysts. Why would anyone want to be called a vendor advocate? How about technology evangelist? That connotes a point-of-view without saying that the advocate is beholden to the vendor’s interest. I actually…
Many thanks to HfS Research founder Phil Fersht for this reply to our recent post opposing state regulation of analysts. Duncan – thanks for airing this important issue. It’s become even more relevant over the last year alone, as rogue technology and services “analysts” are increasing on the take from whichever vendor is willing to…
CIO and Darwin Magazines conducted a survey to gage CIOs’ use of IT analyst firms’ services to make IT purchase decisions. More than half of the executives we spoke with said that IT market research is important to overall IT strategy. Research is used most commonly to educate on a technology or an IT issue….
Given the current FIFA scandal, it’s interesting to note that it is a year since the most serious call yet for the regulation of industry analysts. Phil Fersht argues against the growing demands placed on vendors by analysts’ requests for data. He raises the argument that analysts who beseech such information must have reduced access…
Analyst relations was a big part of Nortel Networks‘ huge success during the 1998-2000 tech boom. In 2000, I became head of AR for Brodeur Worldwide, Nortel’s agency. The team’s accomplishment was so remarkable that we were delighted to get Nortel’s permission to produce this case study in 2002 about its success in Europe, where the firm rose…
Not to long ago the IT research industry was shocked by the sudden demise of one of the best known technology blogs and research firms, Gigaom and Gigaom Research. What went wrong? What are the implications for the freemium business model? And perhaps most importantly, what lessons are to be learned?