Practical Analysis: InformationWeek Analytics' Subscription Model

For almost three years now, InformationWeek Analytics has been in the business of producing in-depth research reports on the business of IT. We've studied everything from cloud computing to IT salaries, data center efficiency to unified communications.

Last year, some 60,000 of our reports were downloaded, some free, some paid, and some underwritten by sponsors. This year, we'll create almost twice as many reports as we did last year, and with that growth, we've moved from selling reports on an individual basis to selling subscriptions. Pricing is simple: $99 per month, with discounts for multiseat licenses.

We want to make InformationWeek Analytics the most accessible, valuable, and useful service that you can buy to aid in planning and implementing your IT strategy. For less than the cost of three of our major research reports, you can have access to everything we produce in a year. By any comparison, that's a great deal. Hopefully, that takes care of accessibility, but what about value and usefulness?

When we set out to create InformationWeek Analytics, we conducted a readership survey that confirmed what we'd seen a dozen times before: IT pros seek out and are most trusting of information from their peers--and we know your peers. Between hundreds of thousands of InformationWeek print subscribers and hundreds of thousands more from our online registrations, InformationWeek Analytics has access to the most complete database of enterprise IT professionals in North America.

But there's more to it than that. When you're evaluating a new technology, you aren't looking for information from just any peer. You want to hear from those who've already implemented that technology, preferably a few times. So in addition to providing the rigorous research that is the hallmark of InformationWeek Analytics, we partner with IT pros throughout the industry, getting them to share their insights with you. When we wanted to do a report on software-as-a-service adoption, for instance, we teamed with an integrator who had helped clients with dozens of implementations. When we wanted to explore trends in IT governance, we worked with a CIO who has experience in both private and government sector operations. Our security analysts engage with dozens of enterprises each year, and the list goes on.

Research is at the core of what we do, but InformationWeek Analytics does a lot more than that. You'll also find best practices reports written for IT architects, and guidebooks that help CIOs ask the right questions before buying new technologies. We have TCO calculators, sample RFIs, completed RFIs, product reviews, and hundreds of shorter reports that will help you understand a rich variety of technologies and issues. We also pull together compendiums of coverage on major industry events such as the Oracle-Sun merger and trade shows such as HIMSS and Mobile World Congress.

InformationWeek Analytics has experienced tremendous growth over the past three years, and it shows no signs of slowing down. We're excited to be able to offer you this new subscription service and to increase the flow of research and peer-based analysis.

Art Wittmann is director of InformationWeek Analytics, a portfolio of decision-support tools and analyst reports. You can write to him at [email protected]. Sign up or upgrade your membership at analytics.informationweek.com/join.

To find out more about Art Wittmann, please visit his page.

Register to see all reports at InformationWeekAnalytics.com.