ATA Research Blogspot

Stats from the Association of Technology Influencers

2012-02-03T10:09:00.000-08:00

As you can see the demographics point to a heavily bias towards senior roles.

The leading roles were Owner, VP, Director, Manager and Senior accounting for 93% of members.

A surprising 10% in the Greater Boston Area driven largely by the concentration of analyst firms in that locale.

For more details visit: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=54516

New Solution Sets Available for download

2010-09-12T23:36:00.001-07:00

The latest solution sets are now available for download - get your business into gear today.

1) Mobile apps are becoming a mainstay for every business but development can be a costly process. Find how you can reap the benefits with our new solution set Develop a Mobile Application and get a complete guide to the development process.

2) Replacing an employee costs 50-200% of that person’s annual salary. Succession development cuts these costs to less than 5-10% of salary if the right strategy, policy and culture are in place. For more info see our guide Engage Employees With Career Planning And Succession Development

Visit our new website

2010-09-12T23:34:00.000-07:00

We've put a fresh coat of paint on the website: www.ataresearch.com

Visit us today to browse our new research store and find the tools and research you need to stay ahead.

ATA has teamed with Info-Tech Research group

2009-12-13T08:42:00.000-08:00

We are pleased to announce we have teamed with Info-Tech Research to offer a range of IT tools and templates to help our users meet a wide range of everyday IT demands.

The first bundles on offer cover IT Fundamentals - click for more info on the 'IT fundamentals' bundles

These are set to be followed by a range of tools covering other topics such as DRP and IT methodologies

Info-Tech Research already provides IT research and advice to more than 21,000 IT professionals worldwide. Their practical, actionable research is specifically designed to have a clear and direct impact on your organization and help you work faster and more effectively..

Top analyst firms - where to start?

2009-10-14T06:00:00.001-07:00

For those new to the analyst industry the first steps toward seeing value are often unclear. Understanding the analyst landscape in any particular sector is a difficult process even for those working in the industry on a daily basis.

Technology evolves ever faster, with markets that were utterly separate converging, sometimes almost overnight. Then no sooner have markets consolidated than disruptive technologies redefine the space with new start-ups springing up.

Keeping abreast of these changes is of course an analysts job but exactly which changes to keep abreast of is not straight forward. The expertise of individual analysts changes over time as they investigate new topic areas. They may become interested in more commercial topics or simply move firm and find they have to focus in another area. Research firms themselves also see change and strategy can diversify as clients needs grow.

For those completely new to the analyst or influencer industry all these factors can of course make the analyst world incredibly confusing. For this reason clear goals are necessary to understand exactly what you expect to achieve.

Draw up a list of what you want and who you think can deliver it. Look at a list of major analyst firms and identify those relevant to you. Do your own research to understand who is writing things that make sense from your strategy perspective.

The figure below shows a list of the major analyst firms by search results. This gives a rough indication of share of voice or mindshare for the main companies. There are numerous other factors that effect the dominance of any particular firm such as revenues, sector coverage, number of analysts, sales activities, presence at events...

For many people who do not recognize the names of any analyst firms the best first step is to find out what other people are reading and the reach of the various companies out there. For those interested in finding out more ATA Research has published a report: Engaging with Analysts

Age of analysts

2008-11-20T03:00:00.000-08:00

Analyst Firm	Median Age (years)
Gartner	36
AMR Research	36
Burton	35
ABI	34
Ovum	33
CCS Insight	33
IDC	33
Yankee Group	32
Forrester	31
Frost & Sullivan	27

A quick search on linkedin provides some interesting numbers regarding the average age of employees at analyst firms. As can be seen there is nearly a ten year gap between Gartner with the highest average age of the major firms at 36 and the lowest average age of 27 at Frost & Sullivan.

Obviously there are a lot of factors affecting these figures as there are numerous other employees besides analysts at each firm but with most businesses at present seeking experienced advisers who have been through previous recessions and weathered the storm the age factor is undoubtedly important.

Online influence in the credit crunch

2008-10-13T04:37:00.000-07:00

With the turmoil in the global markets today the stakes have been raised across all enterprises in the tech sector. With the situation looking positively life threatening for a lot of companies the need to act has never been more important and enterprises need to ensure they make the right choices now if they want to weather the storm.

Small and medium businesses are being hit hardest and traditionally they have the least resources available to interact with analysts. With budgets being slashed there is a need to do more with less and the latest report from ATA Research looks at how to improve ROI. 'Online Influence in the Credit Crunch' outlines the key steps to a successful and low cost influencer strategy.

The chart below, taken from the report, illustrates the huge differences in how users work with analysts. The audience that an analyst is delivering to effects the influence exerted and this must inform decisions.
The report provides rankings of the top analyst firms and individual analysts in terms of online news, blog and search presence and looks at how keyword searches shape analyst agendas. An example of the rankings for blog citations is below.
For more details visit us at http://ataresearch.allthenalysts.com

Crunch time

2008-10-08T03:38:00.000-07:00

With the financial sector taking even more of a hammering this week, particularly here in the UK, the shockwaves are definitely starting to reach the tech sector. Major players such as SAP are seeing huge volatility in their shares and smaller enterprises are struggling to stay afloat.

In a situation where credit sources are frozen business desperately needs on going contracts to be renewed in order to stay solvent. This is exactly what isnt happening in a lot of cases. As companies tighten the purse strings decisions will be increasingly 'deferred' and this can only spell bad news for the IT and tech industry.

In common with most other sectors being hit, IT firms are stripping out unnecessary costs and turning to experienced line management to pull them through. In many cases, as trusted advisors, analysts are part of the package that experienced management turn to.

While the analyst industry is certainly going to be shaken, the analysts producing quality research and advice are going to see an increase in demand for their services.

New tech world order

2008-09-25T04:45:00.000-07:00

With the recent upheaval in the financial markets many in the tech sector thought they were immune but its becoming apparent that the IT and services market is feeling the effects too.

With the global technology industry largely driven from the US, the ramifications of the housing crisis are likely to be deep and long term. With many well established global players crumbling in the financial sector we will have to wait and see the true fall out in the technology world but the effect of brand at this stage is likely to be important in determining which firms survive.

"In 2008, 63 of the top 100 companies are based outside the U.S., up from 57 in 2007."

What will the situation look like in one years time? or two? There is no doubt that those companies that are most agile and offer true value can only benefit from the current turmoil. With sustained growth in the India and China in recent years this could provide the impetus for a radical change in the way the tech industry stands in 5 years time.

Gartner Blog Network

2008-09-18T14:53:00.001-07:00

Gartner recently launched their blog network to much fanfare at their recent Web Innovation summit. Since then there has been a good deal of comment from the blogosphere, with some predicting great things, while others point to the fact that a large number of the blogs are still without any posts.

Whether the network as a whole will take off or not still waits to be seen but it is good to see Gartner opening the door to analysts blogging. This is something that is definitely overdue and can only strengthen Gartners position.

ATA Research has published in the past about the differences between users perceptions of the individual analyst and the brand. The chart above shows the big differences and social media tools are an extremely strong way of tying these two facets together.

While from a good deal of perspectives Gartner is the undisputed leader in the industry its analysts have often had a lower profile online due to a lack of engagement with blogs and other social media tools. Maybe the blog network will see this change.

Analyst Jobs Market

2008-08-19T06:29:00.000-07:00

The symbiotic nature of the AR and analyst industries may be obvious but its interesting to see it represented graphically. This graph shows the job trends since 2005 from an index of over 50 million jobs and the correlation between analyst relations and industry analyst recruitment is pretty clear.

Its intriguing to look at this as a barometer for the wider technology analysis market. As shown on the chart, there has been a steady decline in industry analyst positions since around mid 07 as the credit crunch started to bite. This is a strong sign of the health of the industry, along with profits/revenue, and its indicative that recruitment is now as low as it has been in the last three years.

The AR market on the other hand is looking strong with approximately the same number of opportunities as this time last year and two large peaks in recruitment in between. Does this indicate an increase in demand for AR and PR initiatives in the new economic climate?

Analyst Web Rankings

2008-07-10T09:59:00.000-07:00

The new ATA Research report is out now and looks at analysts online presence.

For more info about Analyst Web Rankings go to -

http://ataresearch.alltheanalysts.com/aw1.php

if a tree falls...

2008-04-16T05:17:00.000-07:00

The first report from ATA Research has now been launched and it was great to see the interest from all-the-analysts community and beyond. The report looked at the IT analyst industry in general, the current trends and drivers and shows data on how end users are actually using the top firms. What has been interesting is to to get confirmation of how differently different stakeholders view the analyst industry.

The analyst industry is by its very nature dependant on multiple unrelated factors, the technology itself plays a part but also complex relationships with technology vendors, new modes of communication such as new delivery channels and the audiences that listen to the analysts. Of these arguably the most important is the audience as they constitute the people who actually action analyst advice.

Different people clearly use analyst research for different purposes but realising the breadth of uses and understanding of analyst research is eye opening. In the analyst ecosystem the end-user is no longer a passive observer but is now very much part of the analysis itself. Analysts can no longer solely give advice about technology on its own because technology on its own no longer exists. These days technology is part of a human centered ecosystem and therefor analysts themselves are now subject to changes in the audience they write for.

Similarly to a tree falling in the forest an analyst not speaking to their audience rarely makes a sound.

2008-03-10T19:13:00.000-07:00

At all-the-analysts we are preparing to launch our first research report under the ATA Research brand. The first report looks at the analyst landscape and provides insight into how users align with the major analyst firms for different technology sectors.

Expect to see it in the next couple of weeks - More news to follow...

RSS and reports

2008-01-31T07:38:00.000-08:00

We recently launched two RSS feeds and have got great feedback on them. The feeds show analyst research or opinion that has been quoted in the press or in blogs and from what we're hearing they seem to provide a very useful tool for people to get a fast, birds eye view of the industry. We are working on some of the suggestions to improve this feature and make it even more useful and will hopefully be able to update them very soon.

To subscribe go to www.alltheanalysts.com/rss.pl

Another feature we have heard alot of demand for has been research looking at how the different analyst firms compare to each other. We have some excellent data on this now and will be moving forward to publish reports. More news to follow...

New features

2007-11-20T08:36:00.000-08:00

We've added a number of new features in the last week, in response to some of the great feedback we've been receiving, and we're looking forward to hearing what people make of them. Social networking has been high on many peoples agenda and there are now tools to comment, rate and compare different reports and more importantly find out what others think of each piece of research.

It seems people want to hear not only the analysts point of view but what their peers think of the research or report. This makes a lot of sense as most people cant just pick up a phone and ask their opposite number in a rival firm how they are solving a particular problem. Our aim in developing these features has been to provide the tools people need to really understand the latest trends. What's more we've also added functionality to search only free reports to help find what you need for less.

You can check out the new features now -simply visit the all-the-analysts.com and hit search.

ALL-THE-ANALYSTS

2007-10-22T07:30:00.000-07:00

Hello and welcome to the first post on the all-the-analysts.com blog.

The idea of this blog is to discuss updates on the development of the site and more importantly provide a place to comment on the trends and themes that are emerging in analyst research and in the technology world in general.

What is so exciting about all-the-analysts.com is the ability to see which topics and analysts people actually choose to read and the aim of this blog is to go into more detail and hopefully generate some lively discussion.

At present we are working on a number of social networking tools and hope to have those released soon so do check back. We look forward to receiving any comments, ideas, suggestions, criticism....