Forrester and Gartner Q4 and full year earnings — Higher prices and emphasis on role-based services

The two analyst firms that are publicly held conducted earnings calls last week, Forrester (February 5) and Gartner (February 6). This analysis does not look at areas of interest to investors, but seeks to pull out insights that are relevant to clients and prospects as well as CIT vendor analyst relations (AR) teams.

For clients of both firms, one important fact jumps out of the earnings calls – price increases will be […]

Should tech startups invest in analyst relations?

rocket-for-startups.jpgLast night I attended the Marketing SIG monthly meeting of the SDForum (an association for tech startups) because Dana Marks of Weber Shandwick and analyst Rob Enderle were talking about “Analyst Relations — It’s All About Influence.” It was a pretty interesting meeting. Rob was very candid and had a lot of funny stories about dealing with vendors that illustrated important issues.  The most salient point for me was that even in the 21st Century the IT industry analysts are still a mystery to a broad swath of the tech vendor community, especially startups. The questions that were asked by the attendees were to the point and reflected real concerns. Here are some examples: 
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