At an analyst relations briefing in November last year a group of Australian-based analyst firms (us, Hydrasight, IBRS, and Forrester) presented to a gathering of 13 international vendor AR managers. It was put to us that we should consolidate into a single provider in order to make it easier for them to spend their research budgets. At the time it seemed a little like Dr Frankenstein telling his monster that he had made a mistake; perhaps creationism wasn't such a good idea. But as in that classic tale, the symbiosis of the analyst and vendor relationship is the strangest of love-affair. Each needs the other as a justification of existence. So how did it get that way?

The fact is that vendor adoption of technology research and advisory services has played the leading role in the global explosion of analyst firms. Check out the front page of our website or the Analyst Equity blog to see just a glimpse of the companies now engaged in this global market.  The weight of competition poses a big challenge to the growth and expansion for most of these firms (will we ever see another Gartner?), and a headache for the established majors. Increasing global demand from the world's leading and emerging vendors remains a major driver supply.

The technology world is ever more complex than it was 10 years ago. I'd defy any analyst company to try to fit their research agenda into 5-10 neat little silos as was possible back then. The one thing that hasn't changed though is the depth of available talent. Is there truly an explosion of quality analysts to foster the same level of relationships that existed in the 1990's?

The big question for industry supply therefore is a war for individual talent. The result is an explosion of firms with fewer than 10 staff of which 3-5 might really qualify as top-shelf analysts. That model is no different to how even the big firms operate. In a major organisation with a resource pool of 600-1,000 analysts less than 100 of those would be considered world beaters. Not everyone is a rock star.    

The 1990's were the period of real growth for the tech advisory companies. As the critical mass of adoption of their services built a demand market, supply-side expertise was fostered in specific technology silos that mapped to large end-user IT operations. Those experts became the IT rock-stars of the 90's. An inevitability became a question of when they and their rock band super groups would disband.

What happened next was that many solo careers sprang up. The organisations who were familiar with a particular brand found that it was actually the outputs and insights (music and lyrics) of particular analysts that they enjoyed so much. The true differentiators were the people. That differentiation remains today.

I have stopped being surprised at the amount of customers who never ask about the research process. So much so that I can be categorically confident that it plays no part in the procurement process regarding our market. It seems that customer confidence in the model comes as much from letting them see that you, as their trusted advisor, aren't some freak with two heads. The rest is relationship and service output. 

We lopped our other head off just over a year ago now. It's been great for business.