The Boards of Informa and Datamonitor are pleased to announce that they have reached agreement on the terms of a recommended offer for Datamonitor by Informa Acquisitions. Commenting on the acquisition, David Gilbertson, Managing Director of Informa, said, “Datamonitor is a model example of a company that slots neatly into the Informa group. Both companies provide business customers with data and analysis that is essential and unique — information they cannot do without.” Reported first at the Technobabble 2.0 blog.
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May 16th, 2007 at 1:41 am
This is a really interesting move - and one that definitely establishes Informa as a major industry analyst firm.
But I don’t think it’s necessarily as focused around IT as we’d all like to think.
First, Informa and Datamonitor both have significant businesses outside of the tech space. In Informa’s case, the non-tech business is significantly bigger.
Second, even if it is Informa’s intention to grow a rival to Gartner, then we’re still a long way from that happening - and Informa will have to invest time and money (including more acquisitions).
Interesting times though!
May 16th, 2007 at 9:14 am
Your tally on the financials is interesting.
In the end, the value comes down to Datamonitor’s 5,000 clients, and perhaps some golden handcuffs to keep prized employees onboard.
I suspect that enabling the piece parts to “slot” into Informa will require some aggressive (painful) shifts in culture, overhead norms, and infrastructure within the Datamonitor piece parts — Datamonitor, Verdict, Computerwire, Butler Group, Ovum, Ovum Summit, etc.