Trouble at t’ Ovum mill
Last week I celebrated (?) the departure from Ovum of two of its diehards, Ian Wesley and Gary Barnett. Ian recruited me to Ovum in 1995 and was hugely influential in my learning the analyst ropes. Gary joined a couple of months after me and quickly established himself as a bright, opinionated and insightful chap. His insights were usually correct, unlike mine ;-)
What was interesting, during the opportunity to catch up on gossip, was the apparent demise of Ovum, especially its software/IT services (SITS) analysis capability. In essence, it’s evaporating quickly. I’m told that Ovum only has 6 SITS analysts left, from a core team of 17 prior to the acquisition by Datamonitor.
There are two reasons for the demise. Firstly, the obvious clash of cultures has been too much for some Ovumites. Ovum was a nice place to work, with nice people in a nice environment. (Perhaps it was too nice, from a commercial viewpoint, but that’s another story.) Datamonitor has a much more aggressive commercial strategy and, I’m told, a less-than-cuddly approach to staff welfare.
The second reason is that Ovum was acquired largely to beef up Datamonitor in anticipation of its own acquisition by Informa. DM needed to increase its book revenues to reach the share price at which it wanted to sell. It also needs to hit the profit targets on which the sale was agreed. DM is therefore reluctant to invest in anything that impacts profitability. This includes merging the analysis capabilities of DM, Ovum, Butler and ComputerWire, which would make more long term sense, but impact short term profits.
The long term future for Ovum is uncertain, and the short term levels of service look set to be affected. There was once a time when Ovum analysts were proud to work at the firm (despite the silly name). This ethos is disappearing fast. Which is a pity.
[Updates: Firstly, I need to make it clear that, although I met Ian and Gary last week, my comments are my own syntheses from various discussions and not necessarily those of Ian or Gary or any other individual employee. Secondly, Anthony Parslow has provided a response to my comments which I've posted here.]
What was interesting, during the opportunity to catch up on gossip, was the apparent demise of Ovum, especially its software/IT services (SITS) analysis capability. In essence, it’s evaporating quickly. I’m told that Ovum only has 6 SITS analysts left, from a core team of 17 prior to the acquisition by Datamonitor.
There are two reasons for the demise. Firstly, the obvious clash of cultures has been too much for some Ovumites. Ovum was a nice place to work, with nice people in a nice environment. (Perhaps it was too nice, from a commercial viewpoint, but that’s another story.) Datamonitor has a much more aggressive commercial strategy and, I’m told, a less-than-cuddly approach to staff welfare.
The second reason is that Ovum was acquired largely to beef up Datamonitor in anticipation of its own acquisition by Informa. DM needed to increase its book revenues to reach the share price at which it wanted to sell. It also needs to hit the profit targets on which the sale was agreed. DM is therefore reluctant to invest in anything that impacts profitability. This includes merging the analysis capabilities of DM, Ovum, Butler and ComputerWire, which would make more long term sense, but impact short term profits.
The long term future for Ovum is uncertain, and the short term levels of service look set to be affected. There was once a time when Ovum analysts were proud to work at the firm (despite the silly name). This ethos is disappearing fast. Which is a pity.
[Updates: Firstly, I need to make it clear that, although I met Ian and Gary last week, my comments are my own syntheses from various discussions and not necessarily those of Ian or Gary or any other individual employee. Secondly, Anthony Parslow has provided a response to my comments which I've posted here.]
Labels: Datamonitor, Ovum
posted by Duncan Brown at 11:46 am
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