Its always nice to receive recognition for what you do, particularly when
a. its a surprise
b. its voted for by your customers
So this morning’s coffee sure tasted great. The Institute of Analyst Relations has been running a survey to see what AR people think of the firms they work with. RedMonk achieved 3rd position in US firm of the the year. RedMonk, just behind Gartner and Forrester: I will take it. Thank you customers!!!
I am most proud though to see Coté taking third place in US Analyst of The Year. Now that is a richly deserved award. Coté spent his first couple of years at RedMonk growing into the role, but now he is very clearly making it his own. His analysis is both opinionated and solid, and he does the best job in the company of documenting what he does for clients at the Internet at large. Coté has also led the charge on our new media offerings, RedMonkTV, moderated screencasts and so on. Lets see if we can make it number one for next year. 😉
Congratulations are also due to David Mitchell from Ovum, who earned a stonking showing across the board, and Ray Wang from Forrester, who just pipped him to top slot as Analyst of the Year. I got third globally.
The poll size was pretty small-only 116 AR people took part- but is still hopefully representative. Independent firms did very well. See also Freeform Dynamics and MWD. Firms that share research for free over the Internet appear to have done well, which would seem to vindicate our open source analysis approach.
According to the blog post by the IIAR:
What came out clearly from the survey was that integrity, independence and market knowledge are the analyst qualities that are most highly valued by AR professionals. It demonstrates very positively how much the IT research industry has matured.
Dale Vile says:
June 2, 2008 at 12:11 pm
Congrats James to you and the Redmonk team. This is a fascinating result, which is indicative of some pretty fundamental changes in the industry.
jgovernor says:
June 2, 2008 at 1:09 pm
I tend to agree Dale, with some caution because of the poll size. What intrigues me is that there are certainly those that would argue the only metric worth measuring in AR is direct impact on purchasing/deals. Indeed some AR optimisation firms take that line. These results however indicate things may not be as simple as that.
congrats to your team too. good show.
Ludovic says:
June 2, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Contgrats to you all, James, Ray, David, Ed…
Just a comment on the sample size: yes, it’s not huge but you should not over analyse this subjective opinions polls and also there are not that many AR pros around, so my gut feel (very unscientific indeed) tells me that the sample is representative from the Universe.
Cheers!
Jonny Bentwood says:
June 2, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Well done from me too.
Even with only 116 people taking part – I know from analysing the survey data that there was clearly a set of people and firms who stood out far beyond everyone else with the number of votes cast for them.
I truly believe that AR has evolved to look beyond sales – firms that get it understand the value that analysts can give in terms of market intelligence, advice on messaging, developments, trends, media commentary etc etc
For what its worth if Forrester can produce AR reports based on smaller survey sizes, then surely this one can hold its head high.
Ludovic says:
June 2, 2008 at 5:03 pm
Jonny, Not sure evolution is linear. Did not AR start as an outbound activity and doesn’t one of the evolution branch leads to more integration with sales? In periods of downturn, where would you feel it’s safer to align: sales or marketing/comms?
Ian Skerrett says:
June 2, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Congrats James. You guys definitely deserve the recognition. I think it goes to show that you, Cote and Stephen are providing real value to your clients.
Keep up the good work.
Ian
David Mitchell says:
June 2, 2008 at 7:54 pm
Congrats on the recognition that you and the other RedMonk’ers have got James. Definitely well deserved and worthy of a drink or two when we’re next at the same event.
David
Congrats to those who deserve it: Redmonk says:
June 2, 2008 at 9:40 pm
[…] http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/2008/06/02/redmonk-cote-recognised-in-analyst-of-the-year-survey/ Posted by md on June 2nd, 2008 | Filed in Technology | […]
Jon Collins says:
June 3, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Gratz guys – well deserved!
Cheers, Jon
Barb Heffner says:
June 3, 2008 at 3:43 pm
What an achievement. Think of the size and age of Gartner and Forrester! Coming in just after these grizzled veterans of the analyst world is quite a stunning achievement. You rock guys.
Good ol’ Redmonk | AccMan says:
June 4, 2008 at 5:04 am
[…] James Governor has every right to puff out his company’s chest following the results of the Institute of Industry Analyst Relations poll which saw his firm Redmonk take honours across a range of market slices. […]
Charlie Wood says:
June 4, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Congratulations guys! Nicely done.
-c
Savio Rodrigues says:
June 4, 2008 at 8:25 pm
Congrats gents!
Cote may be #3 in the US, but he has my vote for #1 with a bullet if we’re rating the best beards in IT 😉
MJ says:
June 5, 2008 at 2:44 am
One must ask oneself, what is the IIAR? Why do they matter? And why should we care about their survey results any more than we care about the research of the firms that they track? Because a relative handful of people have an opinion based on experience with a small fraction of the total number of analyst firms being compared?
A case of the blind leading the blind. It’s not going to change the average Joe’s mind or decision-making one smidge.
jgovernor says:
June 6, 2008 at 3:06 pm
@ludovic that’s fair. its just an indicator, right? as i understand it however AR began as a sales activity.
@jonny – ha!
@ian- thanks!
@david – well done too mate!
@jon 🙂
@barb – I am beginning to feel pretty grizzled myself these days
@charlie – thx
@mj- in many respects i strongly agree with you. simple. that said, industry analysts do affect sales, and do affect decision-making
@savio – I am working on the beard
Patrick Kerpan says:
June 7, 2008 at 9:10 pm
Congratulations – well deserved guys.