In a surprise move HP has snapped up Knightsbridge in a move to bolster its technology services business. Knightsbridge had carved out a strong reputation for handling large data warehouse and BI projects for US corporations, and had grown to over USD 100M in revenue. It was up with IBM as one of the two leading data warehouse consulting organisations. This in itself makes it clear why it was attractive to HP, who do not have anything like such a strong reputation in this area. Knightsbridge was growing strongly in 2006, and the financial terms of the deal are not public, but one would assume HP paid a good price for such a good business. This will no doubt provide a happy retirement for the Knightsbridge founders, but it is less clear as to how well the Knightsbridge culture, which was quite fiercely vendor-independent, will sit within a behemoth like HP, which has its own technology offerings. It was revealing that Knightsbridge CEO Rod Walker had dismissed service company acquisitions in an interview just a year ago, and for reasons which sounded pretty sensible. No doubt this will present an interesting spin challenge for the Knightsbridge PR staff, but perhaps they will have other things on their minds, such as dusting off resumes.
“If the cultures of the two companies are not a near-perfect match, people will leave, and services is a people business.” I couldn’t have put it better myself Rod.
