Equity firm Alta Communications and investor Emily Nagle Green acquired high-tech research pioneer Yankee Group for an undisclosed sum.
Green, a research industry executive who has been a CEO of Cambridge Energy Research Associates and a manager at Forrester Research, will take over as CEO for Yankee Group President and CEO Brian Adamik, who is stepping down to pursue other opportunities.
In an interview today, Green said her goal is to help Yankee Group grow. Green said she gained the experience necessary to do this at Forrester, where she helped build the research firm’s European operations.
“I’m a builder,” she said. “That was a very satisfying experience, and since then that’s really what I like to do.”
With Yankee, Green said she sees an opportunity to take a stable, profitable business that “has clients who are rabid fans of what we do and build on it.”
She acknowledged Yankee has not enjoyed a lot of growth lately, and hopes to change that after taking a step back from the research space in the past year and getting an idea where high-tech is going.
Yankee Group, which was owned by Decision Matrix Group, LLC, began advising companies more than 35 years ago on how to deal with the evolving communications and information technology markets.
Yankee is well known for its coverage of the telecommunications sector. Recent research includes wireless applications and broadband business models.
No other immediate changes are planned.
Consolidation in the technology research arena is a fairly regular occurrence since the end of the dot-com heyday in 2001. As the number of companies taking advantage of the boom dwindled, so did the need for so many research firms pushing similar products.
Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner acquired Meta Group earlier this year for $160 million.
In January 2003, Forrester Research purchased Giga Information Group for $60 million in cash.
Green, who was with Forrester when it nabbed Giga, said those deals were about snapping up more customers and cross-selling products from both companies to both client bases. The Yankee Group deal is different in that it isn’t a bail-out, or a purchase of head-to-head competitors.
