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Gartner To Acquire Burton Group

Gartner on Tuesday said it has agreed to acquire Burton Group, a smaller but well-regarded IT research and advisory services firm, for $56 million in cash.

The move comes just one month after Gartner agreed to acquire AMR Research for $64 million in cash.

Burton Group, which has 41 research analysts and projected revenues of $30 million in 2009, will continue to operate as a separate subsidiary, the companies said.

"It's looking like it will be business as usual for us," a Burton Group spokesman said. "We'll retain most of our brand and our offerings won't change other than we will have this new piece to us."

How that will play out remains to be seen. Gartner has acquired several rivals in the past including Meta Group and Dataquest, both of which were ultimately melded into the parent firm.

Burton Group is known for its enterprise-focused IT research and reference architecture designed to give Global 2000 companies options for implementing infrastructure from operating systems, network platforms, collaboration and service-oriented architectures. Its key practice areas include application development, cloud computing, infrastructure, identity and security.

"Burton Group's focus on pragmatic, in-depth IT research, consulting and events will be a valuable and significant complement to the current Gartner portfolio," wrote Jamie Lewis, Burton Group CEO and research chair, in a posting on the company's Web site.

In a FAQ posted on Gartner's Web site by CEO Gene Hall, the company said it intends to retain all of Burton Group's analysts.

"Burton Group is the industry leader at what they do," the FAQ read. "Over time, we will invest in the development of Burton Group's products and services to expand the functional IT areas they cover in order to increase the value they provide to existing and new clients."

About the Author

Jeffrey Schwartz is editor of Redmond magazine and also covers cloud computing for Virtualization Review's Cloud Report. In addition, he writes the Channeling the Cloud column for Redmond Channel Partner. Follow him on Twitter @JeffreySchwartz.

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