Boston tech consultant Yankee Group is sold

Boston technology consultant Yankee Group Research Inc. has a new owner -- again.

Alta Communications, a Boston private equity firm that specializes in media and telecommunications investments, and Emily Green, a former executive at Yankee Group rival Forrester Research in Cambridge, have bought Yankee from Decision Matrix Group LLC, the company disclosed yesterday. Terms were not disclosed.

They are Yankee Group's fourth owner in nearly a decade. Decision Matrix, which owned the firm for 18 months, had bought it from Reuters Group, a publisher of news and financial data.

Boston entrepreneur Howard Anderson founded Yankee in 1970.

The tech-consulting sector has been slowly recovering since the technology bubble burst at the turn of the century. Even so, some were surprised Decision Matrix would unload Yankee Group so soon.

''They certainly weren't holding onto it for a long-term investment. It was an opportunity buy," said Jess Sheer, editor of Consultants News, an industry trade journal.

Yankee is among a group of local consultancies that sell research on technology firms and industry developments. Its analysts are often quoted in news articles. The consultants, in particular, thrived during the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, when Wall Street was rushing to get in on the latest tech investment idea.

One hallmark of the industry at the time was to turn data subscribers into more lucrative consulting clients. But after the tech sector imploded, the consultancies fell on hard times. Another problem: The many research firms that sprung up in the 1990s no longer have customers willing to pay top dollar for so-called white papers.

''There are firms that are giving their research away," Sheer said, in the hopes that will land consulting business.

Green, a software engineer by training, started her research career in 1995, as an analyst at Forrester. In 2003, she left the company after rising to lead its North American operations and joined prestigious Cambridge Energy Research Associates as its chief executive. She left that company after its sale last year.

Green said she approached Decision Matrix about a deal last summer. By October, Alta had joined her as a partner, and the two purchasers closed on the Yankee Group transaction early this month.

She is now Yankee Group's chief executive, replacing Brian Adamik, who has left the company.

Alta general partner B. Lane MacDonald said Yankee Group would probably concentrate its research -- and growth plans -- on the issues and products generated by the ongoing convergence of media companies and telecommunications firms.

''How people are being targeted by advertisers or content providers is evolving," he said. ''The company clearly has great strengths in those areas that we can build on."

Keith Reed can be reached at reed@globe.com.