Bay State tech groups to merge

The wave of consolidation in the technology business is spilling over into the trade association business, where two of the region's multiple high-tech groups are set to disclose that they are merging.

Effective today, the Massachusetts Software Council will join forces with the New England Business and Technology Association to form the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council. The combined group, to be based at the software council's offices in Boston's Copley Square, will represent more than 550 businesses, making it the region's largest technology trade organization.

More than 75 percent of the combined membership will come from the software council, which is mostly made up of technology vendors. By contrast, the business and technology association, which started as Mass eComm, represents many technology users, especially in financial services and healthcare.

Both groups have suffered membership losses over the past five years, as area high-tech companies folded during the dot-com bust or were acquired by larger conglomerates.

In addition, officials of both organizations say there was a sense that Massachusetts has too many technology trade groups, diluting their impact on high-tech priorities from promoting entrepreneurship to lobbying government policy makers.

''We all agreed that the trade association space has become crowded, and it's become more difficult for us to differentiate ourselves in the minds of members," said software council chairman George Bell, a special-venture partner at General Catalyst Partners in Cambridge who is chairman of the new leadership council.

''Consolidation will allow us to act more powerfully on technology issues and policy issues."

Because the merging trade groups are nonprofit organizations, no money or assets will change hands, though they will combine staff and resources. Software council president Joyce L. Plotkin is president of the leadership council, while business and technology association president Tom Hopcroft is its vice president. The two association staffers are leaving their offices in downtown Boston to join the three staffers at the council's headquarters, and Plotkin said they will hire one additional staffer.

In addition to the two trade groups, a number of other organizations serve the state's technology community, including the Massachusetts Innovation & Technology Exchange, the Massachusetts Network Communications Council, the Massachusetts High Technology Council, the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, the John Adams Innovation Institute, and the MIT Enterprise Forum. Each has a different orientation and mission, and some receive government funding, but there has been substantial overlap in programs and members services.

''Having a more unified voice will help," predicted Ranch C. Kimball, the state's economic development secretary, who in the past has dealt separately with both merger partners. ''We're always interested in having clarity in business voices when the governor and I think about how to develop policy and what we should focus on."

Several of the high-tech trade groups have changed their names in recent years as the technology industry has evolved. During the Internet boom, the software council became the Massachusetts Software and Internet Council before reverting to its previous name.

More recently, it has organized smaller membership groups to address emerging software and technology areas, such as robotics, open source software, and radio frequency identification technology.

''The world is changing," Plotkin said. ''We've been broadening our focus over the last year. Now the goal is to notch it up a level and provide more and better services to the vendors and the users of technology."

The business and technology association started as the Massachusetts Electronic Commerce Association, or Mass eComm, in 1998, the height of the Internet-business era. It changed its name in 2003 because ''e-commerce became niched down over time to mean retail, and we were much broader than that," recalled Hopcroft. Both organizations have most of their members in the Boston area, but some are in Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Maine.

Plotkin and Hopcroft said the combined organization will synchronize its dues structure next year. Its first membership meeting is scheduled for Oct. 6, when the business and technology association had planned to hold its annual meeting and awards ceremony in Boston.

Robert Weisman can be reached atweisman@globe.com.