There's trouble at t’ Ovum mill. Two of the firm's star IT research directors, Gary Barnett and Ian Wesley, have left the firm.
Gary and Ian have been absolutely central to Ovum's growth into IT analysis over the last decade. In the mid-1990s, Ovum was overwhelmingly a telecoms firm. Under Ian's leadership, the IT team there met with repeated successes. Ian has many special qualities, including firm opinions on Arsenal, and I found him to be an impressive manager of analysts as well as a exemplary analyst. That's a rare mixture. Gary is a dazzling technologist: a charming savant who built an igloo for his family one year when I visited them in New England. He justly commands great respect with his clients.
I don't know if either of their departures is a surprise. Ian hopefully has done well from the sale of Ovum (even I can't complain, as a modest Ovum shareholder). Gary's next move will be interesting. Given their mutual love of high-tech sailing, perhaps he can strike a deal with T-Systems?
Over recent months Ovum has lost much of its IT services team, a line of business that only really existed after the purchase of Holway (excepting the work Katy Ring led on ASPs). The turn over there s massive and, as anyone going to holway.com can see, even Richard Holway is back in business (why Ovum didn't think to use that domain name for itself, I don't know). However, Gary and Ian reflect a deep base of skill on the IT side, which is a longer-established core area for Ovum.
We'll be running a 'Advisor Spotlight' webinar on Datamonitor [Ovum's owner] in mid-November. Expect more news about those businesses around then.
P.S. Some bright spark has emailed in to say that Gary should hook up with RedMonk. Although Gary is part of the UK rent-a-quote group, I think he should hang out for the highest offer.
P.P.S. Datamonitor has replied, on Ovum's behalf, here.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
More departures at Ovum
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6 comments:
Stars my ***. Where did you get that from Duncan??
Peel away that slick analyst veener and Gary was really a bit of a pompous, socially inept twat.
Is there a contradiction between being an analyst and being pompus and socially inept... I thought it was the essential quality for analyst stardom.
Had to laugh at the above comment, but to be fair, Gary was one of the few remaining really excellent analysts at Ovum. And although Gary himself would be the first to admit to twattish-ness, no-one who actually knows him would ever call him pompous. It's our loss (I'm still at Ovum).
Shame that Duncan seems to have set Gary up for such criticism by bigging him up to such a ludicrous extent ...
I'm not so sure if I'm bigging him up at all. A search on the Ovum website shows the rage of issues he knew about. Gary and I both worked in ITA for two years and, seriously, he left a real impression on me. I just can't see a reason to rethink the impression that still remains with me as someone with a deep interest in technology which allowed him to really help clients work towards solutions. He has a very unusual combination of skills and, perhaps unlike the anonymous commenters above, knows his weaknesses.
Naturally, it need not be a major impact on Ovum operationally - but one should not imagine that Gary is not a powerful asset to any organisation that is able to find a way to work with him.
Dear Mr. original Anon.
You're partly right, partly wrong. No doubt Gary is a clever chap by half and his IT gab, though somewhat convoluted at times, did tend to make sense. But your original tirade seems to show that some of his past colleagues at Ovum thought he was a rather pompous toff, lording around on his yacht, that's all...
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