451 Group Adds Yankee Group, Kevin Heslin

The 451 Group, the parent organization of the Uptime Institute, has acquired the Yankee Group from Alta Communications, a Boston private equity firm. Separately, 451 Research has hired Kevin Heslin as a Research Manager. Heslin had been the editor of Mission Critical magazine, a publication covering the data center industry.

Yankee Group provides research coverage of emerging IT and communications technologies and markets. In recent years it has focused on the mobile device market, where it foresees a "mobility revolution" that it forecasts to be a $3 trillion market opportunity by 2016.

"We are delighted to welcome the Yankee Group team to join me and the 200+ current professionals here at The 451 Group," said 451 Group Chairman Martin McCarthy. "For over four decades, the insights of Yankee Group have served the telecommunications industry and, more recently, the emergent mobility marketplace. Mobility is a huge driver of innovation in business and technology markets globally. Its impact in the evolving enterprise and broader consumer IT marketplaces will fundamentally shape the future expansion and strategy of Digital Infrastructure.

"With Yankee Group, we see an exciting opportunity to significantly extend The 451 Group’s focus on the evolution of Digital Infrastructure," McCarthy continued. "Yankee Group supports our operating philosophy of long-term, sustainable, profitable, global growth.”

Yankee Group will operate as an independent division of The 451 Group. "The support and resources of The 451 Group as a strategic owner will enable Yankee Group to deepen our focus on key themes driving the mobile ecosystem – including mobile money, mobile and connected devices, mobile applications and cloud, mobile broadband and mobile leadership – and to dramatically expand our new Mobile Advisory and Planning Services (MAPS) platform,”said Yankee Group CEO Terry Waters.

Heslin had been an editor with BNP Media for 13 years, and spent much of that time as editor of Mission Critical. 451 Research includes the former Tier 1 Research operation, and tracks the data center service provider market.

DCK's Rich Miller contributed to this article.