How Cisco Networks With AnalystsHow Cisco Networks With Analysts

Research firms play a different role for established technology vendors than for attention-starved startups.

Cisco does business with most of the leading IT research firms to keep up on industry trends and customer needs. But it has buzz and credibility already, says Skip MacAskill, Cisco's director of industry analyst relations. "Analyst firms are speaking to our end users, and we're speaking to our end users, but these are different conversations," he says.

Cisco has contracts with Current Analysis, Forrester, Gartner, IDC, and Yankee Group. Gartner's primary strength, says MacAskill, is its analysis of IT buying trends. "They've got a huge client base of end users. We need to make sure we're making solutions that people are actually willing to purchase, so we balance that with our own customer intelligence."

When Cisco was developing a service-oriented architecture strategy, for creating products that optimize networks for applications, it turned to Forrester, Gartner, and IDC.

Forrester's purchase of Giga Information Group in 2003 has aligned the firm with business decision makers, a focus for Cisco these days as it moves beyond core networking, MacAskill says. Cisco also is spending more time and money with IDC because of its global footprint, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region. "As Cisco has expanded geographic- ally and technologically, the analyst community has helped school us on how to engage these new customers," MacAskill says.

Cisco's analyst-relations team also develops relationships with other outside experts. Favorites include Tom Nolle, president of consulting firm CIMI; Jim Metzler, VP of Ashton Metzler & Associates; and Richard Sturm and Dennis Drogseth with Enterprise Management Associates.

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Credibility Of Analysts