Pyramid Research acquired by TechWeb’s Light Reading Communications Network

Updated 8/29/08 8:15 am PT – SageCircle’s Carter Lusher just completed a phone-based conversation with Light Reading PR manager Amy Averbook. As is often the case in M&A events, Amy is not permited to provide significant incremental information beyond the press release at this time. She did say that the Pyramid brand would be retained.

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Here is the latest in analyst industry merger and acquisition news. TechWeb is a division of United Business Media, which made the hostile acquisition move on Informa (owner of Datamonitor, Ovum, et cetera, see here). UBM later withdrew its hostile bid.

SageCircle is in contact with Heavy Reading so check back later for an expanded article.

“Pyramid will be integrated with Heavy Reading (www.heavyreading.com), creating the communications industry’s most comprehensive provider of research. Heavy Reading, the independent market research arm of the Light Reading Communications Network, offers quantitative analysis of telecom technology to service providers, vendors and investors.” 

See here for

Forrester buying Jupiter – smart, but not a big deal

There has been commentary in the blogosphere about the larger meaning of Forrester’s acquisition of JupiterResearch. Typically this commentary has focused on points like the analyst industry is consolidating and that major firms are losing relevance and influence in the age of blogs and other social media. It is our opinion that this commentary is wrong and that the acquisition of Jupiter by Forrester does not portend some deep consolidation of the analyst industry due to the rise of the blogosphere, rather it is business as usual. 

To get some perspective, let’s look at a little history of the analyst industry.

Analyst firms have long used acquisitions to fill gaps in coverage and geography or pick up client bases. For example, in the last 15 years since Gartner went public for the second time, it has made over 70 acquisitions to pick up expertise in specialized coverage, get into new markets (e.g., learning software), and to broaden its footprint in

Which acquisitions in the analyst industry were winners or duds?

The Forrester announcement about acquiring JupiterResearch got me thinking about which acquistions in the analyst industry worked and which ones did not. I thought I would call on the collective memory of the analyst ecosystem for the answers.

To help jog your memory here is Gartner Acquisition History (note that this is a selective subset and not a comprehensive list). See Forrester Research Timeline, a history, for some of Forrester’s M&A events. I could not find other lists so leave a comment if you know of other sources of analyst firm acquistions.

To get the ball rolling I’ll give you a couple of examples:

Gartner – Real Decisions (December 1993) - Winner as Real Decisions’ IT benchmarking services complimented the end-user advisory research and was an easy sell for Gartner Sales reps. Too easy as Gartner almost killed the Real Decisions analysts with way too many new clients in the first year.

Gartner – G2R, Inc. (February 1999) – Dud as all G2R analysts had bolted within four months and almost no G2R clients renewed their contracts.

Besides the many, many Gartner acquistions, here are a few other acquistions for you to comment on:

Forrester – Fletcher Research (November 1999)

META – SPEX (July 2000)

In-Stat – MicroDesign Resources (? 2000)

IDC – Meridian

UBM buys Informa who bought Datamonitor who bought Ovum who bought…

In a classic “big fish eating a smaller fish eating a smaller fish” scenario, UK-based UBM announced its plan to acquire Informa. Informa earlier acquired Datatmonitor, which had acquired Ovum and Butler. Ovum, of course, had made three rapid fire acquisitions (i.e., RHK, Summit Strategies, Orbys) of its own before Datamonitor acquired it.

These serial acquisitions are distracting to management and analysts alike so research quality and timeliness could suffer.  Also, some analysts will likely think “that’s it” and start developing a personal exit strategy. Because analysts are the core of any firm, anything that could cause them to walk could dramatically impact the relevance of the firm to your AR strategies and analyst lists. Besides the impact on analysts, this latest merger might be the last straw for sales representatives and client service personnel as well.  As a consequence, AR teams need to be proactive in ascertaining potential pitfalls and opportunities this latest industry M&A move might provide.

SageCircle Technique: Steps* to immediately take:

• Ascertain whether any of your primary analysts might be affected
• Schedule inquiries with key analysts to