Nathan Gilliatt has an interesting model for using RSS to “aggregate and redistribute market intelligence,including analyst research subscriptions, inside the corporate firewall.” He calls it IDS, or Intelligence Delivery System. Analysts are just one source category.

What I like most about his IDS model is that it enables an organization to bring together diverse information in a stable repository and strip out the costs and chaos of things like internal portals, applications and multiple 3rd party content aggregators. To be sure, I’m a fan of these tools and services today. Whatever limitations they present, they provide capabilities that many organizations simply could not justify building for themselves.

Where I disagree with IDS is the emphasis on importing and RSS for herding analyst research content. Some of the most valuable analyst content is delivered in formats that are not RSS-friendly — such as graphics, spreadsheets, databases, video, and interactive tools. Increasingly, content will be delivered in mutiple languages and with role, industry, and regional context.

Robust search applications seem the more promising way forward, for analyst research consumers and analysts alike.

Hat tip to Vinnie Mirchandani for starting this discussion.

Software programmers know the pro’s and con’s of forking. It looks as though industry research buyers and publishers need to give forking some serious thought, as well.

Entrepreneurs around the world are using new data harvesting and analysis technologies to combine existing IT industry research findings into new reports and subscription services. These companies publish reports that combine findings from various studies and sources in order to present their own conclusions, summaries or context. That’s why I refer to this process as forking: you end up with new research findings and context. The resulting data is both new and different from the original.

IT World Canada recently highlighted the latest entrant, Infinity Research and its “TechNavio” subscription service. The service blends inhouse data with data aggregated from many sources, including vendor press releases and publicly available summaries of reports from independent IT research firms such as Gartner, Forrester and IDC. Another, more familiar brand name in this space is eMarketer.

Does forked research have a market? Yes, I think so. Many companies buy research with the intent of forking it themselves. Forked research can help companies save time and effort, highlight a specific market condition, or answer a difficult question. After all, the Truth is not always out there.

Just as with forked software, forked research has some downsides. For example, you might pay for research findings that were freely available or you might have no visibility into a survey population.

The annual IT industry research purchasing season is getting underway. I’d suggest taking time now to understand what these value-added aggregators bring to the party. Figure out whether their forked research fits with your existing research sourcing options and spending.

You can now search all the blogs listed in the Tekrati directory of analyst blogs — and get seriously good results — thanks to Mike Gotta. Mike, who runs with the Burton tribe these days, has mashed up his own Google Co-op magic with my OPML to create one of his serendipity search sites. I’ll arrange to keep the initial search feature going, and add some features and community, within a few weeks (i.e., after CES). Thanks, Mike.

The results are good, based on my initial test queries. And, it’s easy and free!

If you’re going to use it, here’s some background on the Tekrati OPML piece:

First, a note of caution: This OPML is 1.0 — i.e., out of date. It still works just fine with most desktop readers. I’ll publish a heads up after validating/updating with Dave Winer’s OPML 2.

As with all Tekrati directories, this one changes constantly. Recent incoming: 25 blogs since American Thanksgiving. Recent outgoing: no idea.

This OPML is the only Tekrati directory content that is published as “shared content”.

The analyst blogs directory and OPML has a life and luck all its own. I’ve been awed by the caliber of the people who take time to point it out, suggest improvements, alert me to their competitors’ blogs, encourage me to carry on with it. Just a few of the highlights:

The editor of ResearchBuzz, Tara Calishain, gave it an initial credibility with the Internet research community — a world far beyond my ICT research reach.

Tara’s coverage led Matt Pasiewicz, the content manager at EDUCAUSE to my inbox, with the suggestion to add an OPML, pointers on how to do it, and an offer to test it (this all predated Winer’s first OPML validator).

Redmonk Stephen O’Grady caught and furled an unintentionally exposed Tekrati experiment in exporting the OPML to a weblog for central “analyst planet” style publish, search and cross-link. This inspired many selfless and many more not-so-selfless suggestions on tools and services to try. Sadly, none worked very well.

Which brings me back to Mike’s project. I’m really excited about this. Thanks again, Billy Bob — er, Mike…

James McGovern, an outspoken enterprise IT blogger, recently outlined his latest frustration with software vendor sales tactics. His candid post offers an example of how good industry research can go bad in the hands of some vendors. Let’s take his beef with security software vendors.

Mr. McGovern is frustrated with security software vendors pitching SOX compliance as a reason to buy. To him, it’s cliche. Fair enough. Yet, I’ve seen several research studies linking enterprise security with compliance, and IM security with compliance, and so on…

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