Clients of The 451 Group have access to direct, topic-specific counsel from the analyst team through the firm's analyst-inquiry program – 451 Strategic Counsel. This service complements the firm's other, syndicated research services by providing an opportunity to discuss insights that the analysts didn't write and by personalizing analysis to the specific needs of clients.

Counsel agendas are set by clients, and the analysts always spend a significant amount of time preparing prior to the sessions. The result is a value-added interaction that enhances the overall benefit of 451 services.

451 Strategic Counsel sessions are informal yet structured and frank interactions with 451 analysts that are focused within the enterprise IT arena and that might cover the following:

• Key market drivers for important emerging market/technology segments
• Competitive environment dynamics surrounding innovative vendor companies
• Company/technology positioning factors
• Feedback on go-to-market strategy for enterprise IT vendor companies
• Discussion of upside and downside factors related to investing in specific emerging technology segments (for financial-community clients).

Note: Services NOT provided as part of 451 Strategic Counsel include market-sizing or forecasting discussions, market-share tracking discussions, TCO or other IT organization financial-model analyses or discussions and/or custom consulting projects (e.g., white papers).

Sessions typically last an hour, and they are initiated by contacting one of The 451 Group's designated client services contacts.

To maximize the value of sessions, clients should first ensure that the topic to be covered is one that is currently being tracked as an emerging information technology market segment by The 451 Group's analyst team. A good starting place is to review current 451 Market Insight Service reports, 451 TechDealmaker analyses or recent 451 Special Reports, as well as the map of 451 analysts' coverage. Then the topic should be clearly identified and narrowed – focusing on the specifics that are most important to gain from the conversation. A short list of questions should be developed to clearly identify key issues. Finally, clients should work closely with their client services contact to develop and schedule a session that meets that client's analytical and timing needs.

If you have purchased analyst time via the 451 Strategic Counsel service and would like to schedule a Counsel session, please contact your client account manager.