Business intelligence
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In the US alone last year some $14bn was spent on trend analysis, focus groups and opinion polls. Add in buying reports, attending conferences, crunching data and subscribing to consulting services, and extrapolate that globally, and you have an information goldmine ripe for plundering.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in IT, where the leading players in the business analysis arena generate around $2bn (₣1.5bn) in revenues. The world's biggest tech research and advisory firm, Connecticut-based Gartner, employs 4,400 people and is capitalised at more than $2.7bn (₣2bn). Publicly-listed rivals Forrester Research and Corporate Executive Board are valued at $730m (₣530m) and a shade over $1bn (₣730m) respectively.

Inevitably, with so much money on the table, disintermediation has set in and just as in news media, the first major disruptors were bloggers – many of them established web-based IT analysts, shaking up the staid research world with fast, free opinions. Their influence prodded the 10 firms that make up 80% of the business into either acquiring upstarts or starting blogs of their own.

Now a new wave of IT analysis is adopting some of the same tactics – like 'freemium' pricing, social networking and open-source licensing – revolutionising the industries they help inform.

One of the most progressive technology informants is San Francisco-based GigaOM, founded by Om Malik, a Delhi-born journalist who foresaw the transformative impact of a cloud-based future. Malik started a tech blog in 2001, eventually splintering it into an online publishing network, dispensing expertise on green business, new viewing media, collaboration tools and mobile communications. “If you want disruption you go to where the incumbents are slowest to react,” says Paul Walborsky, GigaOM’s chief executive. “The businesses that survive are the ones that have the most intimate relationships with their customers, to the point where they're loath to leave.”

GigaOM now has 4 million loyal unique users upon whom its prospects depend. While most media firms are still dependent on advertising and see conferences and reports as brand-building incrementals, GigaOM has flipped that model. Last month, it launched a subscription service, GigaOM Pro, that targets high-value customers willing to pay extra for events and detailed analysis. In effect, it is using the reach, brand awareness and social networking effects that come with all that free content – paid for on a break-even basis through ads – as a shop window for its premium business.

Just as with Apple’s iPad, the most market-disrupting aspect may well be the price tag: all GigaOM’s in-depth reporting comes at an all-you-can-eat annual subscription of $299 (₣220). Little wonder, it has quickly accumulated more than 10,000 subscribers, including Adobe, Juniper Networks and Microsoft.

The reason this is possible is GigaOM’s cost structure. Rather than foot the entire bill for an stable of high-priced analysts, GigaOM acts as the umbrella for around 70 small firms and independent analysts. These vetted experts may not make nearly as much up-front as they would working for the big companies, but GigaOM’s wide customer base and roadshow events gives them a potentially lucrative career springboard.

It is a self-perpetuating network that Walborsky can only see growing. If successful, GigaOM will have helped transform the research industry from a 'few-to-few' model to a more democratic 'many-to-many' business that will enjoy even greater riches. Analyse that.