Today’s Apple iPad debut has everyone talking, including the tech industry analysts. The launch presented an unusually high profile opportunity for analysts to advance their credibility, influence and client loyalty. All they had to do was get to market quickly (i.e., this morning) with smart, helpful analysis. Unfortunately, only a few did. Instead, most of the industry analysts paying attention to the launch focused on speaking through the press or Twitter.
I checked 25 analyst sites for “ipad” or “apple ipad”. Here’s the short list of analysts who put their clients ahead of their sound bites as of noon Pacific today. My hat is off to all them. They understand that communicating through sound bites and 140 characters is not mutually exclusive to sharing more meaningful analysis — on a real time basis — with clients and online audiences.
Mike Borland, BIA Kelsey, at the Local Media Blog: Hello iPad, We’ve Been Expecting You
Harry Wang, at Parks Associates blog: Will the iPad Kill the Digital Photo Frame Category?
Carl Howe on Yankee Group blog: First take on Apple’s Anywhere iPad
Ted Schadler on The Forrester Blog for Information & Knowledge Management Professionals: Apple’s iPad Will Come Into The Enterprise Through The Consumer Door. Again.
Jeff Orr on the ABI Research blog: Apple Joins the Media Tablet Fray with iPad Launch
Andrew Brown on the Strategy Analytics blog: Apple’s iPad…just where does it fit in the Enterprise?
Philippe Winthrop on his personal blog: The Apple iPad: The Enterprise Mobility Perspective
Maribel Lopez on the Lopez Research blog: Apple Makes Further Advances As The Premier Retailer of the Digital Age
Stephen Baker on the NPD blog: Apple Reinvents The Netbook
If you know of others that were published on January 27, please add them in the comments.
Editor’s note on updates to post: added Andrew Brown; Maribel Lopez; Philippe Winthrop; Stephen Baker.
Popularity: 53%
How can industry analysts start relationships with analyst relations professionals? It’s a question posed every day by every analyst wanting to open doors at tech provider firms. Usually, the goal is sales, research or broadening a professional network. Often, analysts want to build rapport with AR pro’s for all 3 reasons. Two posts offer useful pointers on how to succeed:
SageCircle takes an industry insider view on the sales and research front with today’s post, How can small analyst firms get the attention of analyst relations? [Analyst Question] (disclosure: Tekrati is listed as a key resource)
Mashable offers sound advice on the professional networking front with today’s post, 7 Lessons for Better Networking with Social Media
Having influence in some circles does not automatically open doors in others. That applies equally whether you work at Gartner or as a sole proprietor.
Popularity: 18%
While the wildly successful “Groundswell” book by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff continues winning acclaim — most recently from the American Marketing Association — Josh has announced work in progress on a new book. This time, he’s teamed with Ted Schadler as co-author.
The title is “Harnessing the Groundswell: Drive Your Business With Empowered Employees and Customers”. The authors say this next Groundswell book is not a sequel…
“It focuses on individuals empowered by technology — both employees and customers — and how businesses can efficiently turn them into a force for better performance.” - Josh Bernoff
Look for the book in summer 2010 from Harvard Business Press.
Josh is carrying forward some precedents established with the first Groundswell book project. For example, you can keep up with progress and more at the Groundswell blog.
In case you missed it, Charlene Li started her new book project a few months ago. She’s engaging with the community in full force. You can vote on the title for her book right now — check out this post. I’ll write more once she settles on the title. Hers is due out in May 2010.
Popularity: 20%
The high tech analyst business seemed to be on the brink of imploding due to the tech recession in 2002, and in 2004 at least one Boston journalist was calling for Wall Street style disclosure. These are are among the links you’ll find on this page. This is what I call the AR historical archives, part 2.
For the last few years, I’ve housed this list at the IIAR’s free Yahoo! community for analyst relations professionals. The IIAR plans to shut down that group in December. So I’m posting my archives here. The links are ordered by date.
This section puts the analyst business under scrutiny. It contains links to historical journalist coverage and 1 academic piece investigating the ICT industry analyst business. The links are ordered by date.
The first section is a collection of links where analysts opine on AR. It’s located here.
(MOSTLY) JOURNALISTS ON ANALYSTS
CRMBuyer 3-2007: “Technology Buyers: So Many Needs, So Little Time”
Free. Louis Columbus on tech buyers as process owners and how that impacts analyst influence.
InformationWeek 12-2006: “Ban The Analysts! Or Not?”
Follow up on The Reg and NY Times. Includes reader comments.
The Register 12-2006: “NY Times rattles IT industry with analyst ban”
Ashlee Vance smacksdown the NY Times for slipshod and unfair editorial treatment of Rob Enderle.
The Register 12-2006: “Forrester can’t stand up for falling down over iTunes”
The Reg tries to get the last word in the media and Forrester blame game over inaccurate editorial resulting in a signficant drop in Apple stock prices the week of 11 December 2006. Also see Forrester blog posts this week.
TheAustralianIT 11-2006: “Giant Gartner strands alone”
Interview with Peter Sondergaard
InformationWeek 5-2006: “Blog-Based Analysts Shake Up IT Research”
Free. A new breed of IT analysts is sharing insights over the Internet, leaving traditional research firms trying to catch up using the same methods.
InformationWeek 2-2006: “Credibility of Analysts”
Free. Do tech vendors wield influence over IT research? You bet–but how much of it is a matter of perspective?
InformationWeek 2-2006: “How Cisco Networks with Analysts”
Free. Short sidebar to “Credibility of Analysts”
The Register 4-2006: “Pundit responds to ‘troubling’ Reg attack”
Enderle responds to Vance’s negative comments about his integrity.
The Register 4-2006: “Sun zinged by rent-a-quote analyst”
Ashlee Vance smacksdown The Economist for citing Rob Enderle on Sun.
Boston Globe 11-2004: “Adapting to shift in tech landscape”
Free. Research gurus scrambling to expand offerings and merge
Boston.com 10-2004. “Full disclosure overdue from tech analysts”
$. Is a Wall Street-style clean up overdue in the world of technology analysts?
CIO 3-2004: “Bad News for Analysts, Good News for CIOs”
Free. Today, when it comes to research and analysis, CIOs are taking advantage of what looks to be a permanent buyer’s market. It’s not that research is suddenly worthless. It’s just suddenly worth less.
Network World 3-2003: “Making Informed Decisions”
Free. Rising commodity information, drop in IT spending impact how analysts deliver research to best meet customer needs.
Baseline 12-2002 “Why Tech Analysts Feel Your Pain”
Free. The only thing worse than working for a technology company over the past year, so the joke goes, is being an adviser to users of technology.
Anderson School at UCLA 5-2002: “IT Research and Analysis Services: Surveying their Usefulness” (link opens a pdf)
Free. Academic report on how subscribers make use of IT R&A services, in what context the services are most useful, and why some firms do not subscribe. By David R. Firth and E. Burton Swanson.
InformationWeek 10-2001: “Analyzing the Analysts”
Free. InformationWeek Research’s Analyzing the Analysts series began in 1997 as a biennial study focused on customer evaluations of IT market-research analyst firms. See the half dozen related links in sidebars and TOC for the complete report.
InformationWeek 11-1999: “Analyzing the Analysts”
Free. InformationWeek Research’s Analyzing the Analysts series began in 1997 as a biennial study focused on customer evaluations of IT market-research analyst firms. See the half dozen related links in sidebars and TOC for the complete report.
Popularity: 12%
What’s up this week in influencer relations? Here’s what I’ve been talking about offline when the conversation rolls around to, “So what’s up? Anything I need to know?” This week the gossip has centered around analyst blogs, HP and Dell. Feel free to add your nuggets.
EDS = HP. HP retired the EDS brand this week. Time to update your influencer lists with the HP email and titles.
Perot Systems soon to = Dell. Get your head around what this M&A means if your company relies on referrals and such from Perot Systems.
Who owns blogs - analysts or the analyst house? Are analyst-written blogs more the property of the analyst house or the analyst? Consensus: depends on whether it’s a “company” blog. Some say negotiate social media content rights at the time of employment. Otherwise, personal blogs may be considered company IP at the point of departure.
Top analyst blogs. Jonny Bentwood is preparing to issue his Top 100 analyst league tables. Big backroom buzz is on whether there’s any shakeup at all in the top few. Most gossip is about whether or not Altimeter is an analyst company. I’m thinking the Gartner and Forrester blogs will make a difference, based on the employee base, media reach and Twitter penetration. Usual under-the-breath gripes about RedMonk standings. Stay tuned on that. Not by coincidence, I’m doing a massive Tekrati blog directory update. Buzz me this weekend if you’re feeling compelled.
Enterprise Mobility Matters turns 2. Congrat’s to Philippe Winthrop, today marking the 2-year milestone of his blog.
Phil Fersht soon leaving AMR Research. Carter Lusher broke the news on Twitter. Phil’s uber-smart on outsourcing, offshoring, nearshoring, you name it. Another analyst whose blog has transcended several jobs. I’m not sure there are any top-tier analyst firms that haven’t benefited from his expertise and network. So I’m guessing he’ll jump next to a different kind of gig.
Analysts (and others) on analyst credibility. Must’ve been in the water. Still plenty of time to have your say:
Me
Phil Fersht
Tony Byrne
Michael Krigsman’s take on Tony’s post
Popularity: 16%
Many of us are ready to recognize social media as a standard subset of our B2B and B2C communications channels. Even the slow moving Fortune 500 is adopting public-facing blogs, according to SNCR. So it’s time to stop thinking about analyst-written blogs as a novelty and start thinking about them as part of standard analyst business practice. One of the central topics we can start talking about openly is vendor sponsorship. That’s right: analyst-written blogs as vendor sponsored content.
In the analyst business at large, most (maybe all) communications channels contain a portion of sponsored content. The mix varies by firm. Some don’t license any content to vendors. Others license any and all content. Most firms are somewhere in between.
Sponsored content represents a mature, steady stream of income for many analyst businesses. I doubt many of us were around when the first vendor co-branded analyst report was circulated as a sales tool. Lots of us were around to witness the first analyst appearances in vendor-sponsored microsites, webinars and podcasts. These are commonplace today. We accept them — even mine them — as a natural part of everyday communications channels.
Why imagine that blogs will be any different? Or Twitter? There’s nothing about blogging as a communications channel that makes it a poor match to sponsorship interests.
Think about it. Some analyst firms won’t buy into sponsored blogs / blog content, some will. The question is, will you buy-in?
Popularity: 7%
ZDNet blogger Paul Greenberg ran a poll last week asking who his readers trust most — analysts, journalists, institutional analysts, bloggers, others — “when it comes to a good, clean honest look at the enterprise technology industry… especially around traditional and social enterprise software (CRM, ERP, social network platforms) and technologies associated with it”.
With 171 votes to date, the most popular answers are “Ventana Research” (18%), “I don’t trust analysts” (16%), and Gartner (13%).
At least a few readers took issue with Paul mixing analysts such as Gartner with the likes of journalists, bloggers and institutional analysts. I agree with Paul in this instance. The traditional “analyst” role is part and parcel of the work performed by many journalists and bloggers. Plus, the overlay with institutional analyst reports is just as strong today as at any time in the past.
As I noted in the comments to Paul’s post, informed decision-makers bet on the jockey, not the horse. The results would be different if the poll presented a dozen enterprise analysts and journalists rather than company names like Gartner, Forrester and Frost & Sullivan.
As an aside: It looks as though Ventana put some effort into turning out their voters. It’s too bad they don’t work for the state of California. We could have used them for last week’s special election.
Popularity: 1%
May marks the 1-year anniversary of the release of Charlene Li’s and Josh Bernoff’s book, Groundswell. Several industry analysts have released books since then. I figure it’s a good time to shout out to some recent analyst authors and talk a little about why writing books can be such an important activity for market influencers and influencer relations professionals alike.
For IT industry analysts and other types of influencers, writing a book serves several purposes. Books can help create broad industry acceptance of ideas. They also elevate the status of the author as a bona fide expert, and serve as a powerful marketing tool. As a result, influencer relations programs take “author status” into account when profiling opinion-leaders. Publishing a book adds weight to the influencer’s market reach and authority.
Carol Baroudi, Jeffrey Hill, Arnold Reinhold, Jhana Senxian: “Green IT For Dummies” explores how businesses can save money and energy and reduce environmental waste by becoming a leader in green technology. Carol has other “Dummies” titles to her credit, including SOA for Dummies which she co-wrote with Judith Hurwitz, Robin Bloor & associates.
John Blossom: Developed through a collaborative expert wiki, “Content Nation: Content Nation: Surviving and Thriving as Social Media Changes Our Work, Our Lives and Our Future” describes how social media changes the way businesses market products & services, influences how people interact with the government, and dictates how we communicate with one another on a personal level.
Greg Schulz: “The Green and Virtual Data Center” covers technologies and techniques for data centers trying to maximize resources such as power, cooling, floor space, storage, server performance, and network capacity. It shows how to make server and storage virtualization energy efficient and still be able to support a diversity of high-performance applications without degrading application quality of service or service level commitments.
Chetan Sharma: “Wireless Broadband: Conflict and Convergence” (IEEE Series on Digital & Mobile Communication) explains the business, regulatory, and technology issues of the future market for wireless services. It covers broadband and the information society; drivers of broadband consumption; global wireless market analysis; broadband IP core networks; convergence; and contention and conflict.
Jackie Fenn, Mark Raskino: Companies rush to adopt the innovation, often with a heavy investment—and then, when the promised bounty doesn’t appear as quickly as anticipated, there’s an equivalent rush to bail out. ”Mastering the Hype Cycle” lays out a disciplined, benefits-led approach to innovation adoption, drawing on company examples and Gartner’s STREET framework (Scope, Track, Rank, Evaluate, Evangelize, Transfer).
Did I miss one? Feel free to post additions & comment on these titles. All valid influencers and all types of influencers are welcome.
Popularity: 5%
