Analyst name games

Jason Busch adds good context to an unusal situation in the analyst sphere: AnswerThink adopting the name The Hackett Group.

Generally, ICT research and advisory company names disappear entirely (or at least beyond recognition) following an acquisition. I’m curious to see whether Informa eventually kills off the names of its most recent shopping spree: will Datamonitor and its own recent acquisitions go the way of the Informa buy-outs before them — ARC Group (the mobile sector ARC, not the manufacturing sector ARC), Baskerville, Chorleywood, EMC…

The only other case similar to Hackett Group that I can think of is Alan Meckler. He renamed INT Media Group to Jupiter Media, following the 2002 acquisition of Jupiter Research. At the time, he commented on how much he liked the name. He wasn’t kidding: he held onto the name much longer than the research and advisory, JupiterResearch.