Our servers have moved

This weekend Analyst Equity moved to AnalystEquity.com. The blogspot domain will remain as an archive for a while.

RSS subscribers should find that the feed moves over smoothly to the new domain (we will move the feed on Wednesday, after giving the new domain time to settle down) but let us know if you have any trouble.

Experton under the Advisor Spotlight - Webinar

Experton Group has continued to expand internationally from its leading role in Germany's analyst industry. On Thursday we'll be discussing Lighthouse's latest research into the firm's influence, and placing its progress in the context of the Middle East, its distinctive economies of scale, and the fate of its investment advisory service.

As in each monthly interactive webinar, this discussion will give Lighthouse's insight into developments of Experton Group. We'll share our most recent into the firm's research interests, customer base and international reach. We'll also review the impact of this year's changes on the firm, and the firm's relative influence on end-users.

The webinar will take place on Thursday, March 20 [at 8 am Pacific, 11 am Eastern, 4 pm UK, 5 pm Central European time and 6 pm Finland/Israel time]. To register for this webinar please visit eTickets.

Please hurry: spaces are limited.

Analyst Equity leaving blogger

On Friday Analyst Equity will move fully to AnalystEquity.com, the domain we have used since the blog started. That means that posts will be published there. Please update your bookmarks to http://www.analystequity.com. Our other address, analystequity.blogspot.com, will be an archive for a while.

RSS readers will need to subscribe to the new feed: we'll send out a reminder next week.

Open Text shoots up in the Lighthouse Software Index

The biggest gainer of analyst focus this month is Open Text which has leapt up a massive 24 spots. The announcement of some excellent financial growth along with news of upcoming products has surely helped the firm in improving its ranking this month.

Veritas, which is now a part of Symantec, is also the focus of analysts this month and has gained 14 positions. The firm is in the news due to the sale of Precise Software Solutions, the application performance management business of Symantec. This business was acquired by Symantec when it acquired Veritas and hence the sale has sparked a rise in the mention of Veritas.

Informatica is the only new entrant to the top 25 this month. The firm has recently been in the news for the announcement of its new data migration suite and for announcing the implementation of its PowerCenter solution at India's second-largest bank, ICICI Bank.

Altiris, which had posted strong and unexpected gain last month, is the biggest loser this month. The firm has dropped 15 positions and is now ranked at the 41. Aspect Software, stated as a challenger by Gartner in the IVR Software segment, has dropped down 7 positions and is now ranked at the 32nd spot. The firm is the only firm to have dropped out of the top 25 this month.

If you wish to be sent the top 25 firms in Software Index each month, email us at analysts at lighthousear dot com. You can also read how we do our Analyst Index rankings, subscribe to our Spotlight service for new and interesting analyst research or register for our monthly Advisor Spotlight Webinars.

Found on blip.tv

In this segment from the IBM Software Group Connection Summit 2007, James talks with Jerrilyn Glanville, a veteran of IBM Analyst Relations ("AR" for short). They discuss the role of AR, both on the side of the analyst and of executives, some examples of different styles and idiosyncrasies of both analysts and execs, and then talk about the changing nature of analysts. Finally, by way of a question from James on IBM seeming to be more interested in conversations than "transactions" (helping IBM make money directly with increased sales), they discuss the ROI on analysts for companies.

Credo 4: Integrate statements into complete messages

Our Credo series continues with the argument that consistency should be a compulsory consideration for analyst relations. Sadly, many firms fail to integrate their claims coherently. As a result, analysts get multiple and inconsistent visions of the corporation from different spokespeople.

Complex businesses suffer most from this pressure. Sadly, those are also the businesses that stress their desire to give customers a single and integrated experience. As a result, the analyst relations programme fails in one of they elements of our IDEAL methodology for analyst relations: Alignment.

Alignment works in multiple ways: AR has to communicate the organisation's meaning; it also needs to ensure that the organisation's different claims are shown to combine; crucially, it also means have a 'completed message', which means joining up claims, from the strategic 'top' to the proof-point 'bottom'. Messages also need to tie together the rational calculation and the emotional experience consistently: the tone and feeling of interactions need to tie to the firms values (See Logic and Emotion, whose cool chart this is, for more on this riff).

That means ensuring that each claim is part of a 'whole message', which includes six elements:

• Umbrella statement: what is the message?
  
• Benefit: What experience are you promising the buyer?
  
• Sound bite: Say that again, memorably
  
• Independent Validation: who else says so?
  
• Customer story: Who has made work?
  
• Proof points: What's the proof?

Many spokespeople have one or more of these elements, but few have the whole message. Many firms offering 'integrated' services, for example, struggle to provide proof points at both the enterprise and the service levels. Many businesses reply on getting internal functions to work together to sell client engagements. If companies can't connect together their messages, then they'll give analysts the impression that the different part of their business are similarly misaligned.

Lighthouse's competitive positioning process helps organisations to tie messages together in this way, and to ensure messages have the right back-up information to meet analysts' needs. And that points us towards the fifth recommendation in our Credo series: that AR should conform to the analysts' needs.

Hewlett-Packard jumps up in the Lighthouse Systems Index

The biggest gainer this month is Hewlett-Packard(HP) which has gained 7 positions and is now ranked at the 12th spot. The firm has been named as one of the Top 50 most innovative companies and appears focused to hold this prestigious spot by investing heavily in consumer tech support. The firm is also courting some very rewarding analyst focus on its products especially the Deskjet series of printers and blade servers.

Toshiba, the giant electronics and electrical products manufacturer, has gained 2 positions. The firm has dropped out of the high definition format war to focus on other products and has reportedly announced a new venture with SanDisk to expand flash memory production in Japan. SanDisk has also gained 5 positions and is now ranked at 28th spot. Océ which recently launched its new line of JetStream printers has also been able to get analyst's attention and is up 3 spots. It's also the only firm that entered the top 25 this month.

Freescale which was the biggest gainer of last month has dropped down 6 positions and is the biggest loser this month. Seagate is also down 6 spots and is now ranked at 34th spot. Texas Instruments which has boasted its portfolio of products with the new Omap Processors has also slid down 2 spots and has dropped out of the top 25.

If you wish to be sent the ranking of the top 25 firms in the Systems Index each month, email us at analysts at lighthousear dot com. You can also read how we do our Analyst Index rankings, subscribe to our Spotlight service for new and interesting analyst research or register for our monthly Advisor Spotlight Webinars.

Master Class in San Jose on April 15

On April 15 Louis Columbus and I will host an AR Master Class in San Jose, CA. This unique event focuses on defending and extending corporate support for AR. It discusses the role of goals, measurement and reporting in establishing the right framework for AR. It also allows AR leaders the opportunity to discuss different approaches for developing sponsorship, visibility and active support for strategic AR.

April's session will have three novel features:

• Some senior AR managers will join the class for our annual boardroom discussion over a working lunch. Those discussions are conducted using the Chatham House Rule: attendees are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of participants may be revealed.
• The master class also provides a unique opportunity for participants to book one-to-one sessions with Louis or I for in-depth discussions of particular interest.
• Master class participants will receive a hardback copy of Efrem Mallach's book, which has been substantially expanded from under 200 pages to over 330.

It's the first time we'll run the event in California: it has been held annually in Boston or New York for the last few years. Subscribers to Lighthouse's AR Intranet get free seats at the event; otherwise the master class costs $1250.

Thursday's webinar focusses on information channels

Most AR managers focus on content: the information that they think analysts need for their work. However, very few have a confident idea of channels: what specific ways of providing that information to analysts is most effective in different regions.

This Thursday's webinar discusses the wide range of information channels, and connect them up to attitude factors with analysts, the inbound value of analysts to your firm and the growing importance of the "consultant difference".

Introduced by Professor Efrem Mallach, this webinar will discuss:

• Eleven different information channels for reaching analysts
• The different types of analyst, and how theyir need for each channel differs
• 'Best practices' for providing information via each channel.

The webinar will be on Thursday 13 April at 8 am Pacific, 4 pm GMT and 5 pm CET. The event is free for subscribers to Lighthouse's AR Intranet. Others can register online here.

IIAR's blog weighs in on ethics

The IIAR's blog has a new post on ethics, referencing an article on this blog which is one part of a developing discussion.

Since the IIAR's blog has an consensual editorial process, it's a powerful signal of mainstream thinking in the profession's leading AR community. I recommend it.

Analysts vs. Bloggers: the discussion develops

Since writing on analysts and bloggers I've had some more thoughts and a lot of feedback, some of which is incorporated below. This blog has stimulated quite a few reactions, and I encourage readers to look at Dean and Dan's comments here.

Pretty much everyone agrees that vendor-oriented market exposure is the primary motive for the analyst blogging going on today, and that firms with a large end-user client base like Gartner are being rational -- for a number of substantive reasons -- for not jumping in. However, there are additional thoughts for analysts' motives on blogging –

• 1) Declarative living. For example, it’s a coincidence that the blogger happens to be an analyst, he’s really blogging to whinge about how much he hates business travel.
• 2) Professional peer networking. For example, trading technical thinking with a small group of peers in IT, vendors, or academia who flourish in their technical niche. Those motives of the analyst-cum-blogger are personal, not driven by the firm’s agenda.
• 3] Defensive motives. Where firms ‘blogwash’ themselves to avoid being erroneously labelled as a ‘social media laggard’ by small-scale competitors who can only advance their own agendas by taking the incumbents down a notch. These would be faux-blogs, not serious contributions to discourse.

I've also been involved in a fascinating discussion about blogger relations, and been pointed to a few articles which tie into some of these themes. They are best read in the following, chronological, order.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/projectfailures/?p=438
http://redmonk.com/jgovernor/2006/11/01/blogger-relations-at-adobe-oracle-and-sap-and-a-bit-of-ibm-microsoft-sun/
http://www.johnsimonds.com/2006/11/more-on-blogger-relations/

Are Industry Analysts Objective? Or what?

Nancy Shapira-Aronovic, a Tel Aviv partner of Knowledge Capital Group, has triggered an interesting discussion on her blog. She asks readers what they think of KCG's view that vendors cannot buy the opinions of Forrester and Gartner's research and advisory services. The discussion is here.

She's cites KCG's Bill Hopkins making the comment in respect to what the firm calls 'Deal makers and Breakers'. Ygel has nice chart on his blog to show who those firms are.

Her title, Are Industry Analysts Objective?, reposes the question very nicely. It would be mistaken to suggest that one can simply buy the views of top analyst firms. But it would be too sweeping to suggest that vendors' commercial relationships with analyst firms, even the top ones, have no impact. Vendors are not buying opinions the way they buy advertising space, but they are buying an opportunity to shift bias and change the sources of information from which analysts are reaching their conclusions. As Carter comments in that thread, there is bias even in the top firms.

Opinions come from experiences. By buying analysts time, vendors can directing the analysts' work and focus them on particular topics and viewpoints. There are many reasons to do that, and one is the common-sense observation that we tend towards the opinions of those we know more than to the opinions of those we do not know.

A new look for Analyst Equity?

We are playing around with a new template for the blog, and would love your feedback.

Take a look here, and tell us what you think. The major feature of the blog is the improved use at categories to organise the different topics used in the blog. Over the years there's a lot of content in the blog - our hope is to make it more accessible.

The template also draws more attention to comments, flagging them up on the front page and, in doing so, encouraging discussion and critique. However, that exposes us to more risk from comment spam. As a result, we're turning on comment moderation. The alternative, registration, would prevent the many anonymous comments we get.

Analysts don't all follow each others' research

One big difference between different analysts is the attitude they take towards each others' research. Lighthouse's free research tracking service, the Spotlight, includes our selection of the most notable research published in our four focus areas: telecoms, systems, services and software. Some analysts love the idea; other don't.

Linda and Doreen, two of our research assistants, are on the phones this month to find out what analysts think about the Spotlights, and to offer free subscriptions to analysts that don't currently subscribe. It's a very uneven experience for them calling out to these analysts. Most analysts are very interested in reading what other analysts have to say; other analysts are a bit offended. You'd think they'd rather have their eyes poked out than read what their peers have to say.

Neither group is right or wrong. Many analyst firms have good reasons for discouraging analysts for follow the research of other analysts: the firms want to generate unique IP, and want to avoid using some of the proprietary vocabulary of their competitors. Other firms work through a process of reflecting and developing their ideas with an external peer community. Of course some of the analysts in the first group do subscribe to the Spotlight, but as a form of competitive intelligence.

It's useful for AR managers to think about this difference too. Analysts in the same firm often won't pool information with each other, and many analysts have little or no interest in what other analysts say. It's a well accepted faux pas to try to use the opinions of one analyst to change the opinions of another. But if you find an analyst who is interested in what their peers are saying, it's worth thinking about ways to raise the general direction of analyst research with analysts, and even find ways to bring open-minded analysts together. If they are reading our Spotlight, then they may already know each others' names.

If you want to subscribe to the Spotlight service, just send an email to Linda at lighthousear dot com, with a note to pick your choice from the four available: telecoms, systems, services and software.

Unisys "leads the pack" in the Lighthouse Services Index

Unisys has finally dethroned Accenture as the number 1 firm in the Lighthouse Services Index. Apart from being mentioned very positively in a case study relating to the outsourcing efforts of US Department of Health and Human Services, the firm has also won new contracts to jump up 4 positions and claim the number 1 spot. It will be interesting to see if Unisys manages to hold onto this spot against its rivals in this category.

Lockheed Martin, the winner of the NASA's highest award for quality has jumped up 11 spots and holds the distinction of being the biggest gainer in this month's Services Index. The firm has been mentioned prominently this month due to the rare incidence of destroying an errant space satellite and it is not hard to predict that it will find it difficult to hold onto this position next month. SAIC has also gained 8 positions and is now ranked at the 24th position. The firm has just won a major contract from the Air Force Center for Engineering and the Environment and along with Lockheed Martin is the new entrant to the list of top 25 Services firms monitored in the Lighthouse Services Index.

Cognizant was the biggest high profile loser this month as it dropped down 4 positions. The firm has announced excellent results for the year 2007 but has failed to maintain its share of analyst mentions. BearingPoint did also slide down 4 positions and is now ranked at 21 spot. Orange Business Services, the biggest gainer last month, and Fujitsu Services are the 2 firms that have dropped out of the top 25 this month.

If you wish to be sent the top 25 firms in Services Index each month, email us at analysts at lighthousear dot com. You can also read how we do our Analyst Index rankings, subscribe to our Spotlight service for new and interesting analyst research or register for our monthly Advisor Spotlight Webinars.

Our friends need a Global Product Manager, and more

CoreMedia, my first client here at Lighthouse, is hiring. It's an amazing chance to experience an inspiring and quite open organisational culture, and to live in one of the world's best cities - Hamburg, Germany.

They are hiring a Product Marketing Manager, User Experience Designer and a Global Product Manager. This is what they have to say about the last of these vacancies...

Are you passionate about software and technology and love being involved in the development of innovative products?

Do you know which products and topics are going to be hot in the future and you already have your own ideas about making these a reality?

CoreMedia, the leader in innovative people-centric social software, is looking for a Global Product Manager with a solid technical background who can bring new and compelling products for enterprise customers to market. You’ll be given exciting challenges, a high level of responsibility and personal autonomy, and , respect and individual esteem. A great team, attractive pay conditions and many chances to further your career await you.

CoreMedia was founded in 1996 and is headquartered in Hamburg, Germany. With offices in Chicago, London and Singapore, it employs around 150 staff worldwide. If you’d like to be part of CoreMedia’s success, please contact doerthe.kleine-pollmann at coremedia.com, enclosing your resume in PDF format.

If you're on the CeBIT show floor, stop by and ask for Gunnar.

The fundamentals for analyst relations that supports the business

Carter's comments on how AR should respond to budget cuts should encourage AR directors to take a fundamental look at their AR programmes. We still think that most analyst relations effort is wasted. From top-to-bottom, AR professionals should review the goals, the challenges and the solutions - and take a realistic assessment of the internal support they can in obtaining the difference resources that AR programmes need to succeed.

Many AR managers struggle to show the measurable benefits of analyst relations:

• The increasing of analysts' propensity to recommend the firm, which we measure though our multi-client Analyst Attitude Surveys. Other methods can be executed through your business development function, such as win-loss analysis and surveys of prospective clients.
  
• The profile of your firm in analysts' research is strongly indicative of analysts' confidence in recommending vendors, and can be shown through the Analyst Index.
• Mentions of your firm by analysts cited in the media are tracked in many ways. None are perfect, but our forthcoming QuickTier service will combine desk research with numerous third-party resources.
• Analysts' guidance to your executives can give an undoubted boost to your firm's operations. It's easy to use analysts' billing rates to monetize the value of the time analysts use to give you their insight. What's harder is to measure the value their insight helps your executives to unlock.

However, there are a number of obstacles that many AR programmes struggle to overcome. These obstacles tend to flow from a common root. Generally, the subset of industry analysts that vendors-side staff come into most contact with is the set of analysts who obtain most of their revenue from vendors, and are highly focussed on a particular technology. Most vendor executives will find these analysts more satisfying to speak with than others with more customer influence.

• Often, AR professionals' colleagues overstate vendor-centric analysts' importance whose niche revenues comes mainly from vendors.
• The challenge for many AR managers is to find the analysts that clients will approach over the problem that the vendors' technology solves. Often these will not be analysts specialised in the technology. For example, we could cite the example of a major bank looking to integrate credit card systems across state boundaries. The bank might speak to an analyst who follows financial systems in Europe generally, and might have no deep knowledge of very large databases.
  
• Vendors often can't see the limits of 'incumbents' . The vendor might have a protected 'cash cow' niche, for example, in which analyst influence is weak, and under-estimate analyst influence in more competitive high-growth markets. Similarly, they might have strong relationships with an analyst house in their domestic market, but not understand that a different analyst house in influential in an attractive export market.

Our experience is that our IDEAL methodology is a powerful tool to help managers responsible for AR to ensure balance and focus in their work.

• Identifying analysts is essential if firms are to target their effort.
• To drive and develop AR, firms need to have a benchmark to show where they are, and how they can get to where they want to be.
• Engaging analysts requires a lot more use of resource-light 'broadband' communications with less influential analysts. Newsletters, spotlights, events, extranets, webinars, and conference calls can cover off a large number of less-important analysts. That frees up time to provide highly personalised, continuous, discussions with influential analysts.
• Alignment with the rest of the business is crucial. Existing resources need to used at every opportunity. Many more AR managers need to consider coaching and training for colleagues and agency staff who need to independently develop relationships with second or third-tier analysts. Spokespeople at every level need to be develop, and need to understand that the business wants to say to analysts.
• Leverage is where the programme stresses support for business development. AR managers need to see how they can feed back the results of the AR programme to the rest of the business. Support for press releases, white papers, 'silver bullets' for salespeople, research spotlights and analysts attending events are effective routines that can grow into more strategic programmes of sales support.
  

Gartner's latest AR newsletter impresses us

A quick post... Anyone looking for a good example of the sort of newsletter to send to analysts should take a look at the AR newsletter Gartner sends. It's nicely done.

Bloggers vs. Analysts: opening a discussion

We have recently raised the issue of how to relate to analysts who are bloggers with a few of our peers. We wanted to see if the situation has moved on much from Tim's PR Hype Cycle, and it has.

Quite a few of them seemed to be concerned with the move towards more reporting and less analysis. One major concern is that more and more analysts publish information from briefings onto blogs without going through the normal review process that allows the correction of misunderstandings that frequently arise.

Another issue that we have been discussing is the nature and role of regional bias in the context of analyst blogs? Jonny's top 100 are all written in English, and overwhelmingly by analysts in the US and UK. What does that say about the adoption of blogs, the cultural preference of different forms of material and the importance of blogs for the English-speaking vendor community?

In an attempt to answer these questions, we need to ask ourselves about the origin of the stimulus to blog. Where does it come from? Most AR managers that we spoke to simply referred to the “vendors” as being the main stimulus. This is an interesting observation regardless of its accuracy (and regardless of most arguments about the independence of analysts). The statement that the blogs are “pretty much all vendor facing” does not seem to be right to us. Analyst blogs are aimed at various audiences and, certainly with firms like CMS Watch, some bloggers are aimed at end-users and not at vendors. It is therefore not correct to regard blogs as being solely vendor orientated. It would be very interesting to speak to Jonny's top 100 in order to compare their motivation to blog with the opinion of clients and managers. One stimulus for posting is most certainly the rising pressure to “write up briefings” for clients right after the meeting. This used to be a faux pas, which misunderstood the analyst process. However, partly because it is nice to meet expectations and it gets vendors' favour, analysts are often encouraged to write up their notes of what vendors say quickly (with little or no primary analysis or end-user feedback).

This leads us to another important, if not the most important question: what information needs do analyst blogs meet? Most posts are event driven and many offer reporting and not analysis. While quick reactions get readers, the value and differentiation they add compared to thousands of other industry pundits is limited. As one can see from Jonny's list, one can become a well-read blogger without a meaningful client base or a rigorous research process. Some analysts however, like Gartner, PAC, Le CXP, Berlecon and Penteo will only release a small part of their IP because the research process they use is more onerous. As a result, their blogs are either a marketing tool for their paid content, or non-existent. Of course there is also some commercial common-sense at work here. If your research is funded by end-users then you need to convince them to pay for content, and you are more careful about what you give away. However, if your research is funded by vendors then you can more easily afford to give it away, especially if the vendors are funding your work on the expectation that the resulting research will be widely circulated.

There is an argument that ARs have limited resources, and they need to focus on the analysts that impact sales. On this basis, the effort vendors' AR teams invest in blogging analysts is often a question of metrics. Those focused on sales often do win/loss analysis that encourages them to under-weight most bloggers and ignore those without notable influence on sales. However, there are others who think this approach is wrong. For example, companies that are more focused on the consumer and SMB markets, tend to spend much more time on bloggers. For those firms the choices are different, and often reflect larger resources focused on web communications. They sometimes have more resources than intelligence. Consequently, they can find it easier to respond to almost everything, especially if their metrics weights every blog equally. Their idea is that influence is dispersed, and not concentrated. Therefore, their audience is often not just the buyer, it is much wider: the channel, the regulator, the state, the developer and more.

AR managers who are focused on high-end B2B sales have learnt that the influence of analysts impacting deals in the board room is quite concentrated, and is not widely dispersed. Of course, this means that the vendors who sell to enterprises generally put less effort into the vendor-focused analysts. With the help of “blogging” some vendor-facing firms get to stimulate a response from vendors that have previously focused their AR on analysts with more influence on sales. It is a stimulus-response action waiting for a dissertation to be written about it.

Analysts blogs stimulate different responses from different vendors, because of the different significance of blogs to their internal and external audiences. It's like an in-tray exercise. Do you prioritise the bloggers or answer the Magic Quadrant (MQ)? MQs are hugely time-consuming -- an RFI with 2-3 briefings, maybe a SAS (before it's in RFI stage), and often a 2-20 pages (note the range) or proof points and arguments. The MQ not only takes a massive amount of time, but also requires an experienced AR team prepared to focus on that one priority. Focus also requires the confidence to forego other opportunities. Many AR teams cannot focus. So they prefer briefing easy analysts and bloggers, then they get a positive blog or a quick take: that pleases internal stakeholders in some firms.

The issue for many AR managers is how do they evaluate the investment put into analysts seen as influencing sales when then also blog on briefing topics without peer- or vendor-review. The speed of blogs, and their individual nature, involves a typical quality/quantity trade-off. But it also creates more risk for AR managers, since analysts are more likely to publish mistaken comments on blogs, then can quickly escalate into reputational crises.

Of course the opposite question also needs to be asked: How many blog posts could be generated by the effort it takes to produce one MQ? How many positive blog postings from vendor-centric analysts would it take to neutralize one negative MQ?

For AR teams there is more work in stimulating 20,000 blog posts than getting one positive MQ, but - and this is crucial - responding to an MQ involves getting internal stakeholders to offer real candour and some detailed information. AR with no internal leverage is forced towards AR outreach with lower quality information.

That weakness often comes from weak relationships. AR teams with low internal leverage have more anxious internal stakeholders, and spend more time fire-fighting. The issue of immediacy (blog) vs. analysis is of growing significance for those firms. AR needs to decide whether to reach out to more analysts or to fewer. A broad focus often reflects the unfocused demands and fears of internal stakeholders. However for most firms selling to businesses, AR teams should focus effort and nurture carefully selected relationships.

Nurturing top analysis is tougher and needs deep interactions, and a tightly managed relationship. That is a challenging judgement, because it is also about the goals of AR and the target market. However, many AR teams are getting pushed to over-communicate with bloggers regardless of blogging analysts quite uneven influence on vendors equally different client base.

AR teams focussed on sales influence (especially those in markets like telecoms and outsourcing, with small number of deals of high value) should devote almost all their their resources to the fairly few analysts who impact their firm’s deals and concentrate on solid analysis to that they can use metrics to help internal stakeholder to understand why focus is crucial. But that’s not the right approach for everyone. AR teams with a remit to improve a perception with a wider audience, possibly because they sell through channel partners (large number of deals, low value), should focus on a wider ecosystem of analysts and influencers.

P.S. This blog has stimulated quite a few reactions, and I encourage readers to look at Dean and Dan's comments here. Dean usefully points out that some of the trends I discuss here are not universally true (and that's part of the reason why I also flagged up some contra-indicators in my post). He makes a powerful comparison between blogging analysts 'quick takes' and equity analysts' short notes. Those notes, of course, are highly transactional, and exist to help brokers to stimulate investors to buy and sell stock. It's interesting to see what work-flow is stimulated by analysts' blog posts. Dan adds some important points from his Forrester experience.

Big gains for Telecom Italia and PCCW in the Lighthouse Telecoms Index

The biggest gainer this month is Telecom Italia which has gained 8 positions this month. The firm has announced a radical reorganization of its infrastructure in a bid to sort out its financial troubles. PCCW has also gained 7 positions and is now ranked at 23rd spot. The firm has won a series of awards and is the sole entrant in the top 25 of the telecom firms monitored by Lighthouse.

In the top 5 BT and Ericsson have "swapped" places this month. BT, which has recently proposed the acquisition of Frontline Technologies, has moved up 2 spots and gained the coveted number 3 spot. Ericsson, which announced its intention to divest its PBX business to Aastra technologies, has slipped down 2 positions and is now at the 5th spot.

Enterasys has shown the biggest decline this month and has dropped by 9 positions. Apparently the firm's announcement of ten consecutive quarters of pro-forma profitability has not helped it to retain its influence amongst the analysts. Research In Motion, maker of the popular Blackberry, has also lost 5 positions and has dropped out of the top 25.

If you wish to be sent the top 25 firms in Telecoms Index each month, email us at analysts at lighthousear dot com. You can also read how we do our Analyst Index rankings, subscribe to our Spotlight service for new and interesting analyst research or register for our monthly Advisor Spotlight Webinars.