Sometimes the problem with being as big as IBM is simply that. At some point there are simply not enough marketing messages to go around. Back in October last year at the Information on Demand event in Las Vegas IBM's execs would have had us believe that next generation business applications will unequivocally be BI led with some analytics thrown in to boot. This was an obvious retort to a similar line of messaging from Larry Ellison at Open World earlier in the year.

Now today at Lotusphere 2010 in Orlando we are being asked by other IBM execs to accept that Lotus Notes (the enterprise collaborative suite-platform) is the window to the corporate soul (the entry point for corporate information platform). Now while it is a compelling argument, in all seriousness what is the story and how must a CIO or CEO choose?

One of the key drivers for the Notes angle is the close and obvious integration of the Web Sphere portal brand, and the necessity of a "portal" entry point. But also the rise of mobility solutions within the enterprise is an obvious plug for the collaborative angle. While Cognos and their competitors will argue that managers are driven by metrics, Lotus may correctly argue that it is the nature of the corporate employee to communicate and collaborate.

Downturns are always interesting times for the analyst industry. I’ve lived through a couple but always as staff. Layoffs always happen, as we have seen with Gartner and Forrester culling 2-3% of their respective global research headcount over the last month. Australia hasn't been immune. Management changes will occur as well as the usual chop and change of resources between companies. Further consolidation is inevitable.  

What makes this recession interesting is that it is the first since 2005 when the last big spike in new analyst firms (like us) popped up on the radar. Times have been pretty good since then. However as a business owner I am glad that we started almost four years ago and not in the last 12-months. 

Since those times we have made it abundantly clear to most organisations we talk to that a stretch end-game for us is IPO. We want to be the recognised Australian analyst brand. To get there our challenges are not just internal because the industry itself has changed dramatically in the eyes of the customer and analyst relations alike. 

I used to take cameras to conferences just to capture some memories for the photo albums but it seems that you’re no longer a professional analyst, twitterer, journalist or blogger (or anatwitterblogalist if you do them all) unless you have a camera. Preferably digital. With both video and still capture functions. And if you are to attend a convention such as Lotusphere, then a landscape or telescopic lens wouldn’t be out of place either. Apparently.