* Gartner purchases the analyst firm, which has had a good grasp of identity issues over the years
I ended the last issue by promising more predictions for this one. And I intended to look at merger and acquisition predictions today. But events have caught up with us — the first major acquisition of 2010 is already upon us. In fact, agreement was reached on Dec. 30, but only announced last week. So we’ll consider Gartner’s purchase of the Burton Group to be the lead-off merger and acquistion activity for the year.
No one predicted this!
I ended the last issue by promising more predictions for this one. And I intended to look at merger and acquisition predictions today. But events have caught up with us — the first major acquisition of 2010 is already upon us. In fact, agreement was reached on Dec. 30, but only announced last week. So we’ll consider Gartner’s purchase of the Burton Group to be the lead-off merger and acquisition activity for the year.
Take a look back at the hottest M&A deals of 2009
I attended my first Catalyst Conference, put on by the Burton Group, in July of 2000. In talking about that conference, and the low level of understanding of directory services (DS — the precursor to identity services), I said: “The Burton Group itself, especially Jamie Lewis, Phil Schacter and Dan Blum, also understand. But too many of the rest of the presenters showed a remarkable lack of knowledge both of the importance of directory services as well as how DS is being used in today’s networks.” To this day, Lewis (Burton Group CEO) and his identity services team (Bob Blakley, Gerry Gebel, Ian Glazer, Kevin Kampman, Lori Rowland and Mark Diodati) are the cream of the crop when it comes to identity issue discussions and thought leadership.
I don’t always agree with what Burton’s analysts say, but they always make me think harder about my own beliefs and opinions.
I’ve known Lewis even longer, from his days as a columnist at PC World in the mid-90s when we’d often be the only two columnists covering a directory-centric press conference announcement. His interest in those issues have never flagged.
The worrisome part of this acquisition is in the numbers — will the 40 Burton analysts be swallowed up in the midst of the 1,200 Gartner analysts? Will the Burton culture, immersed in thought-provoking, forward-thinking analyses be replaced by one that produces the in-famous “Magic Quadrants”? As I said back in October: “It’s also time for Halloween and Gartner Magic Quadrants (MQ). Not sure which is scarier!”
Burton’s Lewis did promise his clients that the acquisition will not change the services provided to them. But, as the acquired party, it’s questionable what he can do to enforce that promise. It’s really up to Gartner to decide how different the future will be for those clients. There may be few changes; there may be many. The upcoming Catalyst Conference in Prague this April should offer the first clues. If there are big changes coming, then it might be time for a new identity-centric consulting service to emerge on the scene.
From the IdM Journal Events Calendar, there are two interesting Webinars coming later this month from Courion:
Jan. 19 — Keys to a Successful Access Certification Strategy
Jan 28 — Access Assurance in the Cloud
