Having worked with many of the leading analyst firms over the last 3 decades, it has been fascinating to work as an independent over recent years. More and more independents seem to be springing up either from an analyst or vendor background. Most vendors and service providers are happy to invite ‘us’ alongside the well-represented analyst firms to their product and strategy events as well as to major industry conferences such as MWC and CES. Not surprisingly, given our industry experience and lack of corporate constraint, we are generally more outspoken than many of the representatives of the establishment.
Industry events provide opportunities for analyst colleagues from all sizes of organisation to meet. and share thoughts. Out of some such discussions came the project I have been running with Amdocs Network Solutions Division, where different independent analysts collaborate to produce high-level papers each covering a key topic within the sector. The client gets the benefit of working through a single point of contact, whilst the independent analysts get a streamlined route into a client and the broader market to present their thoughts and opinions. And, through this collaborative approach, our combined knowledge and experience (amounting to over a hundred analyst years), the quality is excellent. Luckily, the technology at our disposal also allows us to build flexible teams to address issues despite our very different backgrounds and locations.
Initial papers have been:
– What’s the CTO’s role in the digital boardroom – Marc Dowd and Chris Lewis
– App-aware networks vs. network-savvy apps – Dean Bubley and Chris Lewis
– The evolving supply chain and its implications for the CTO – Tony Poulos and Chris Lewis
– Why 5G won’t be enough – Caroline Gabriel and Chris Lewis
Future papers already in the pipeline include Telcos and the SME, and the impact of the OTTs on telco business and network models.
People are sceptical about the independence of analysts. Some firms, and indeed individuals, have been that ‘gun available for hire’ to promote particular companies or technologies. Obviously, someone has to pay the bills. In this project, the topics are agreed upfront but editorial control remains with the analysts. Since Amdocs Network Solutions Division is using the papers and accompanying videos to help raise their awareness at a high level with the world’s CSPs, there is no product pitch, no axe to grind – just an opportunity to provide high-level content to potential customers to make them think about the future of the telco and its role. So the client benefits from the papers and their thought-leadership, whilst analysts get a platform to demonstrate how they are able to compete in a market dominated by a few major players and a very long tail of small companies.
Whether you are an independent analyst with experience of the telco sector, or a company working in the telecoms industry, there might be an opportunity for us to work together. Take a look at the papers and think about topics that you think could be addressed in a similar way.
Add to this the Great Telco Debate www.telcodebate.com (London on November 15th 2016) as a platform for the independents and more open, wide-ranging discussion around the future of the telecoms industry. Attendees love the format and honesty of debate. In 2015 we used analysts as a panel to sum up the different debates and interrogate their joint wisdom on the future of the industry! Nowhere else do attendees get the contrary perspectives on offer from such a wide variety of industry stakeholders.
Long live the independents!