Talk:Frost & Sullivan/Archive 1

Archive 1

Awards section

I have reverted the edits by Utexx for a couple of reasons. First, the language used is excessively promotional. Second, the other editor had mentioned criticism of the awards, citing a source, so it is better to incorporate this. Third, Utexx's references were bare links, which I had fixed, and two were to the company's own website, which is too much; I had removed the second self-reference. Related to the third, I'd kept the Narendra Modi reference in good faith; as stated in my edit summary, I can't see it, though I was able to verify that the company name appears in the text; but if it does not support the characterization of the awards but merely the fact that people including Modi have praised the company, that's puffery and we should not use the reference. Yngvadottir (talk) 21:40, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

An IP editor restored the puffy description of the awards and the bare link, but removed Modi. I cannot see the relevance of IPVM's supposedly being a competitor, but have specified the narrow field in which that source is criticizing the awards. Is there another critique of the awards that Utexx and/or the IP can add that is from a more neutral source? We can't ignore 3rd-party sources and just cite the company's own advertising of its awards. Yngvadottir (talk) 16:52, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Utexx has removed the criticism as invalid/incredible, leaving the article with only the statement from Frost & Sullivan itself. I don't see why the criticism is invalid; it explains its reasoning with examples. However, it is admittedly old: dated 2009, with an update added in 2014. And it applies only to one narrow subset of Frost & Sullivan's awards—the surveillance industry—and that update says that Frost & Sullivan has given hardly any awards in that field in recent years. So it would be best to have more recent and broader third-party assessments. If Utexx or anyone else can find such, please add. Otherwise I'll reinstate the criticism. I'm not going to search myself—I doubt I have access to the necessary databases. But we should not be padding this article out with claims the company makes about itself. Better to simply omit notice of the awards; but they appear to be among the few cases of others writing about the company in any detail. And I'm pinging Brianhe at this point; he added the reference under his alternate account. Yngvadottir (talk) 21:40, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

• Not sure if this is necessary (still learning the ropes here) but I am re-posting my note here as well, so the history to my edits/reasoning can be on record on this entry's talk page:

Hi Yngvadottir,

My 1st response was lost when saving so I'll try this again.

First, thanks for your suggestions. I see and agree with your points that the initial contributions were too complimentary; I'll try and keep future contributions more fact based.

I had worked in the industry analyst world for a long time so I have familiarity with Frost & Sullivan, Gartner, IPMV, Forrester, Yankey Group, Ovium, E&Y and other such analyst/consulting firms, which is why I chose to start here.

I still feel uncomfortable with the reference to IPMV because when you look at their website, they seem to 'trash talk' many competitors with many accusations but no evidence to prove their claims (see https://ipvm.com/section/Awards). In looking at credible, 3rd party sources (I.E. Forbes, Business Week, Fortune, Fast Company, Venturebeat, etc.) I can find no bases for any of these claims against any of the companies mentioned in the IPMV website. Ultimately leading me to believe it is just 'trash talking'.

I will remove the reference altogether and we can leave it at that for now. I will continue to scour 3rd party sources and look for evidence of these claims or supporting facts and can update the entry if and when such information comes to light.

Thanks and happy editing! UtexxUtexx (talk) 21:04, 16 February 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Utexx (talk • contribs)

• Hi Utexx, Yngvadottir asked me (on my usertalkpage[1]) to take a look at this situation. Some wikipedia-technology-tips, you don't need to paste the entire thing again, it is usually better to wikilink to what you wrote elsewhere like this,[2] which you can find by clicking Special:Contributions/Utexx for example (or click 'view history' at the top of the page in question), and then clicking on the 'diff' button for the one you want (or sometimes the 'prev' button in history-tabs). Also please skim WP:INDENT which explains how to use talkpages, they are kinda tricksy at first. Non-technological aside, welcome to wikipedia  :-)
• I would tend to agree with you the IPVM (not 'IPMV' that is a typo) counts as a competitor to f&s, and thus would be a very biased source,[3] especially to use in WP:WIKIVOICE. If we wikipedians, which includes you Utexx obviously, think it over and decide to include any of the analysis-type stuff that was published by IPVM despite the problematic nature of the authorship thereof, it would have to be WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV-type quotation, and qualified properly: "According to Fname Lname at IPVM.com, which is a competitor of Frost & Sullivan, the F&S awards..." That sort of thing. But generally speaking this is *never* done except per WP:IAR perhaps... wikipedia shouldn't be quoting Apple's executives on Microsoft, nor vice versa... instead WP:NOTEWORTHY says to summarize what newspapers/books/etc have said, in a neutral just-the-facts WP:TONE.
• That being said, in this specific case, the actual material being used in the wikipedia sentence about the f&s awards process, is from a direct quote by a Frost & Sullivan employee, explaining the firm's business model. This is considered factual WP:ABOUTSELF information, because it is the company explaining their activities, rather than an independent third party journalist or academian doing so in narrative voice. (Let alone a competitor in biased hyperpartisan voice!) Such material of WP:ABOUTSELF provenance must be used with care, but it can be used. Is the quotation-paragraph written by the f&s employee, that appears near the bottom of the IPVM website as a pull quote,[4] somehow non-factual? When you removed the URL from the Frost & Sullivan article, you wrote "Removing last reference [and associated sentence] since it's claims lack credibility"[5] but there was not really room in the edit-summary to explain why you think the ref had problems, specifically. Can you fill me in please? 47.222.203.135 (talk) 14:05, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

I think the issue of credibility comes from the data source as a whole; the entire article is hosted on a competitors website, which begs the question, "how accurate is it?" It does reference a F&S employee, but we have no way of knowing if that employee actually gave that response, a different response, or if the website author simply made it up to support their claims. There is simply no way to validate the response so it comes down to a 'he said/she said situation'; in such a situation, I'd assume its best to use caution and not perpetuate something we can't validate via a 3rd party source otherwise we risk degrading WikiPedia's credibility. Utexx (talk) 18:24, 28 February 2017 (UTC)Utexx

analysis of sources

First a question, actually... this seems to be WP:THETRUTH but is too WP:VAGUE, does anybody know the details? All the ref says is "was publicly traded" with no ticker-symbol mentioned.

• In 1982, Frost & Sullivan was publicly traded (which exchange? what ticker symbol? what years? this info ought to give us a lot of financial-newspaper-type refs but I could not find those answers! maybe they were listed on a UK or Asian stock exchange?)

These look like WP:RS from a quick glance

• merged with a subsidiary of FAS Acquisition Co...
• [f&s founded] in 1961. (same source used to back several other factoids)

• EL#2. http://www.fundinguniverse.com/REDACTED_PER_DMCA == History of Frost & Sullivan. This looks like an external link to potential WP:COPYVIO of the above Derdak&Grant book. I have removed it from mainspace for the moment
• Here is a reworked Template:cite which points to the 2006 Thomson Gale original, plus a backpointer to the 2003 print-book.
• There are some refs listed at the bottom of the encyclopedia.com piece, which may help us expand Frost & Sullivan if we can locate them.

References

These are "trade rags" and industry directory listings and such, they can be used with care.

• lost its New York sales office in the September 11 attacks.
• Srinivasan (President)

References

These are mostly WP:ABOUTSELF sources, and ought ONLY be used for very basic corporate-history factoids that are not WP:PROMO in any way

• [press release authored by corporate partner which was republished in a trade-zine] In 2002, it further expanded its alliance with Dialog.
• [interview with] Frigstad (Chairman)
• 40 countries.
• founded by... Lore A. Frost
• services fall into 3 categories...
• company issues industry awards...
• EL#1. http://www.frost.com == Official Frost & Sullivan Website

References

I will try to do a pass through mainspace later, and clean things up a bit plus add in some refs that I found (see below). I don't think there is much question that Frost & Sullivan satisfies WP:GOLDENRULE, but the wikipedia article thereon, needs fleshing out with those kind of WP:SOURCES. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 14:05, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

more sources

Some new things that I turned up in a quick search:

• here is the corporate history, per WP:ABOUTSELF -- https://ww2.frost.com/index.php?cID=389

• another wikipedian with ProQuest access (see WP:TWL/Databases) should be able to use these 1980s WSJ refs.[6] With luck that will tell us the stock-ticker-symbol and the associated stock-exchange.

• Frost & Sullivan Reports Approach by Foreign Firm. Wall Street Journal; May 5, 1982; p. 4
• Business Bulletin. Wall Street Journal; November 17, 1983; p. 1
• Publisher Raises to 23.3% Stake in Frost & Sullivan. Wall Street Journal; July 14, 1987; p. 3

• f&s awards are sometimes painted as legit... usually in overseas newspapers...

• http://www.thestar.com.my/metro/community/2016/04/28/mobile-virtual-network-operator-wins-excellence-award-for-third-time-in-a-row/ , The Star
• http://www.irishtimes.com/business/health-pharma/oneview-wins-global-award-for-hospital-technology-1.2837038 , The Irish Times

But far more often, awards-announcements appear as completely republished-press-release prNewswire type stuff: "global modular datacenter company of the year best practices award"[7] (this is an f&s award given to Cannon Technologies Ltd of Santa Clara, California which is *not* the same firm as Canon the bluelink.) Names for awards like that one, give a strong hint of paid PR. Did Cannon Technologies Ltd have any financial stake in the award process? This may just be a press release which is from a particular winner, and thus concentrates on their particular win, without listing competition. Apparently the report itself costs $5k for a site-license; here is the table-of-contents of the 154-page May 2016 version.[8] How many companies are in the 'modular' datacenter sub-sub-industry niche, of the datacenter sub-industry niche, of the webhost/ISP industry niche, within the broader telecoms industry? How many of the companies in the report were awarded a regional award or a global award, and what percentage selectivity was utilized? See also the separate #Awards_section talkpage discussion further up.

• f&s analysts are quoted regularly by legit news media (aka WP:RS), usually namedrops plus quotation in financial news-pieces.

• http://www.cnbc.com/id/49144968 "...'...pressure,' Satish Lele, vice president at Frost and Sullivan Asia Pacific, which advises firms on technology, told CNBC."
• https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-30/oil-holds-losses-as-u-s-crude-stockpiles-seen-expanding-glut "...'...inventories,' Carl Larry, director of oil and gas at consultant Frost & Sullivan in Houston, said by telephone. 'Inventories...'..."
• https://newspaperarchive.com/tags/?pep=frost-sullivan has a lot of material behind a WP:PAYWALL (but some wikipedians have this access see WP:TWL/Databases), over 100 hits for each decade since the 1960s. For example: June 14, 1969, Oakland Tribune, Oakland, California: "...the respected research firm of Frost Sullivan has just issued a confidential, 46-page study... ...heart expert quoted in the Frost Sullivan study thinks the initial pricetag will run around..." This was about eight years after the firm was founded, and across the country in a San-Francisco-area newspaper (f&s was originally HQ'd in NYC and only later moved to San Antonio is my understanding... nowadays they are located in Mountain View California aka just a few miles from Oakland but I'm not sure about their branch office reach in the 1960s)
• see the hits I mention below for Fast Company which has about a dozen analyst-quotes over the years from f&s (usually referred to as 'analyst at the firm' but sometimes specifying that f&s is either a 'consulting'/'research'/similar entity)

• f&s offers their research-report-database to universities

• https://extranet.kenan-flagler.unc.edu/research/Lists/Research%20Resources/DispForm.aspx?ID=1522&ContentTypeId=0x0100FFAEBC91C77CF349B300595F85AAAE5B "Frost and Sullivan offers current, full-text, technical reports, economic reports, and market analyses on emerging high-technology and industrial markets in 50 countries." (currently mainspace claims offices in 40 countries, but f&s publishes analysis of 50 countries, in other words. Does anybody have the list of branch-office-locations?) "...Categories include: Aerospace and Defense, Automotive and Transportation, Chemicals, Materials, Food; Electronics and Security, Energy and Power Systems, Environment and Building Technologies, Healthcare and Medical Devices, Measurement and Instrumentation, Information and Communication Technologies, and Industrial Automation & Process Control." (these are the research-areas the firm sells to corporate customers as well as offers to universities presumably)
• Kathryn Fitzgerald; Laura Anderson; Helen Kula (July 13, 2010). "Embedded librarians promote an innovation agenda: University of Toronto libraries and the MaRS discovery district". In Karen MacDonald; Hal Kirkwood (eds.). Business Librarianship and Entrepreneurship Outreach. Vol. 15. Routledge. doi:10.1080/08963568.2010.487689. ISBN 9781317995227. Retrieved February 22, 2017 – via Original academic paper, Taylor & Francis. ...[pg36] Market research reports [list of]. Multi-industry [report services]: BCC Research, Datamonitor, Frost & Sullivan. ICT [information and communications technology report services]: Forrester, Gartner, IDC. ... [pg37] the valuation formula developed [to self-assess the usefulness of the library project]... Librarians' time is assigned a value of CAN$200 per hour... the rate is higher than some fee-based librarian services, lower than some rates charged by MBAs working in consulting firms, and the same as that used by Frost & Sullivan for their analyst time [as of 2009] ...[pg87] Industry and Market Research Databases.... BCC Research, Dun & Bradstreet, Euromonitor, Forrester, Foundation Center, Freedonia Group, Frost & Sullivan (University Partnership Program, http://www.frost.com), Gale/Cengage, Gartner, IBISWorld, MarketResearch, Mintel, Plunkett Research, www.r4l.info ...[pg83] In terms of market research, Gartner's Core Research seemed to have the most breadth and depth in the area of technology. However, Frost & Sullivan's University Partnership Program and BCC Research's Market Research Report Subscription seemed to cover most of the topics of interest [for the needs of the university library implementing the project]. Gale's Small Business Resource Center offered... Market and industry research databases to support technology commercialization [by university library constituents] were also evaluated [for purchase by the library]. Frost & Sullivan, a database that brings together market and technology research, was purchased to support business faculty... {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help); External link in |via= (help)

• As of 2012, f&s was one of the top ten "IT-industry analysis firms" by number of employees (or in the top eleven if you count dataquest separately from Gartner their parent-company which at the time was the case I believe). This piece also gives a solid overview of how the industry works, and is freely available (no paywall), so although it gives mere passing mention to f&s, might be worth listing as WP:EL with 'overview of the industry' or similar hyperlink-caption.

• Jean-Gregoire Bernard; R. Brent Gallupe (December 1, 2013). "IT Industry Analysts: A Review and Two Research Agendas" (PDF). Communications of the Association for Information Systems. p. 300 – via Publisher's website. ...dominant firms of the [I.T.-industry analysis] industry: [as of 2012 lists Gartner&Dataquest + Forrester + IDC/IDG in the United States as well as Yankee Group in London] ...Table A-1 in Appendix A lists a further sample of firms operating throughout the world in the industry as of 2012. ...[including] Frost & Sullivan, Advisory Board Company, Corporate Executive Board, and NPD Group [all in the United States], as well as Datamonitor of London, GfK of Germany, [plus a couple dozen smaller firms] ...Frost & Sullivan. [Headquartered in] San Antonio, TX [as of 2012]. Private [i.e. not publicly traded on a stock exchange]. 1001-5000 [employees as of 2012]. [Founded in] 1961. {{cite web}}: External link in |via= (help)
• Google also promises me that the piece behind the following Elsevier-WP:PAYWALL specifically mentions f&s, but I don't know to what depth.
• David R. Firth; E. Burton Swanson (March–April 2005). Dennis W. Organ (ed.). "How useful are IT research and analysis services?". Business Horizons. Vol. 2, no. 48. Elsevier BV. doi:10.1016/j.bushor.2004.10.018. ISSN 0007-6813 – via Publisher's website. {{cite magazine}}: External link in |via= (help)CS1 maint: date format (link)
• There was also a 2002 version of Firth&Swanson, ~8 cites, IT research and analysis services: Surveying their use and usefulness, which may or may not discuss f&s.

It is pretty difficult to use search engines to find detailed in-depth material specifically about Frost & Sullivan, as opposed to namedrops of their analysts and press releases of their clients which namedrop f&s but otherwise do not give details. I will circle back and try to add a few more refs here, but Utexx over on the User_talk:Yngvadottir page, you said that you knew of some pieces in "Forbes, Business Week, Fortune, Fast Company, Venturebeat" which discussed f&s, was I understanding you correctly? If so, please post the URLs here.

For instance, when I do this search,[9] for the f&s HQ and f&s name at Fast Company, I only get these two hits:

• [10] "...Frost & Sullivan projects that car-sharing revenues in North America alone will hit $3.3 billion by 2016. ... 'According to a Frost & Sullivan study from 2010,' says Car2Go managing director Robert Henrich, 'the revenue in the car-sharing market will...'..."
• [11] ... which seems to be a bug in google's cache, the search-results-blurb-excerpt suggests that google was *trying* to send me to this other search-hit instead, [12] "...'...it is,' says Frost & Sullivan drone analyst Michael Blades when asked..."

And although these count as legit namedrops of f&s in WP:RS, they are not about Frost & Sullivan because they are just commentary in the financial news media by analysts that work for f&s. Does that make sense? For this article, we need URLs that are newspapers/books/magazines/televisionNews/radioNews/academia/governmental/etc which have some meat to them, with respect to talking specifically and in some reasonable depth about f&s. Those two URLs are more useful in GoPro and Car2Go articles, as opposed to in the Frost & Sullivan wikipedia article. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 14:05, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Hello Again.

When referencing "Forbes, Business Week, Fortune, Fast Company, Venturebeat" etc. I was referring to them as examples of legit business sources. My comment was that there are no such legit sources to support the claims made on the IPVM source.

Regarding comments on Cannon tech and the Award, I'm not sure how the title can be indicator paid PR? Industry Awards and/or Endorsements are a common practice in the Analyst World/Market Research World. For example, E&Y (Ernst & Young) issues their own Awards (http://www.ey.com/us/en/about-us/entrepreneurship/entrepreneur-of-the-year); Gartner issues a chart (Called the Magic Quadrant) and a CoolVendor Report, both of which are used by the companies being mentioned in them as an Award/Endorsement, JD Power issues Awards, etc.(though more of a survey company, they are still under the overall umbrella of a research firm like those being listed above). Each of these companies use a segmented title system (something like: Product Leader for Modular Data Centers, in Europe) which is done to show exactly what sector, what region, and what kind of product/service these companies are endorsing. Many times using a generic term like Data Center isn't specific enough as there are many kinds of data center set ups with "modular" being one. Using a generic term would indicate the the recognized company provided a product or service across all kinds of data centers and that may not be true, hence all of these research companies use a similar type of titling system on their reports, Awards, whitepapers, etc.

Bloomberg does have a little info on the overall company itself with a few items I don't recall seeing on their site (http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=28747)

I also did find a link showing that its info is used at the university level as you indicated further up (https://johnson.library.cornell.edu/databases/frost-sullivan) Utexx Utexx (talk) 20:47, 27 March 2017 (UTC)