IT Consultant Edgewater Acquires BI Specialist

Edgewater Technology, an IT consulting services company, has acquired Lynx Business Intelligence Consulting, a Los Angeles-based provider of business intelligence and corporate performance management professional services, the company announced this week. The $5 million Edgewater paid for Lynx includes $3 million in cash and $2 million in Edgewater stock.

Lynx's area of expertise is working with performance management applications from OutlookSoft, which was bought by SAP in May, and to a lesser extent Hyperion, which was acquired by Oracle in April.

Edgewater's acquisition is the latest in a wave of consolidation that's been sweeping the business intelligence software arena in general and particularly among developers of performance management tools. Business Objects acquired Cartesis in June while rival Cognos expects to complete its buyout of Applix by the end of the year.

Earlier this month Microsoft jumped into the performance management application market when it debuted its Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007.

Edgewater, based in Wakefield, Mass., offers implementation and consulting services around Business Objects, Cognos, Hyperion and OutlookSoft products. CFO Kevin Rhodes said acquiring Lynx will deepen its expertise. "This provides additional scale to our corporate performance management and business intelligence practices," he said.

Edgewater was named to this year's VARBusiness 500 list, ranked #313 with 2006 revenue of $60.1 million.

Other performance management service-related acquisitions Edgewater has made include Ranzal & Associates in 2004 and Alecian Corp. this past July. Both companies were Hyperion service partners.

Rhodes also noted that most of Edgewater's presence is on the East Coast and acquiring Lynx will help the company expand its operations. "This provides us with local talent and a beachhead on the West Coast," he said.