IHS

Looking back on some of the successful rollups of the past.

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IHS, Information Handling Services. IHS and Markit merged in 2016 to form IHS Markit. Before the merger, IHS made several significant acquisitions that drove substantial revenue. Some of the most notable acquisitions by IHS before the merger include:

1. Global Insight (2008): IHS acquired Global Insight, a provider of economic and financial information, in 2008. This acquisition expanded IHS's capabilities in economic forecasting and added depth to its market intelligence offerings.

2. Jane's Information Group (2007): IHS acquired Jane's Information Group, renowned for its defense and security intelligence, in 2007. This acquisition strengthened IHS's presence in the aerospace and defense sectors and enhanced its portfolio of critical information and insights.

3. CERA (Cambridge Energy Research Associates) (2004): IHS acquired CERA, a leading energy consulting firm, in 2004. This strategic move significantly boosted IHS's presence in the energy sector, providing clients with comprehensive energy market research and analysis.

4. GlobalSpec (2012): In 2012, IHS acquired GlobalSpec, an online engineering and industrial product database. This acquisition expanded IHS's offerings in engineering intelligence and provided valuable data to professionals in various industries.

5. R.L. Polk & Co. (2013): IHS acquired R.L. Polk & Co., a provider of automotive information and analytics, in 2013. This acquisition added automotive market intelligence to IHS's portfolio, enabling clients to access data on vehicle registration, vehicle history, and automotive market trends.

IHS was great at expanding into different verticals and cross-selling. What they lacked was digitizing the data and getting into the modern data delivery mechanisms that we all expected. Before being acquired by Markit, lots of the data was delivered via PDF or newsletters. I remember hearing rumors post the acquisition that there were millions of pages of information i.e. data that needed to be digitized. I truly believe the market is in need of the next IHS, another rollup of different industries offering unique and valuable datasets that can be cross-sold. A more modernized version of this would allow you to get this data via Snowflake or a simple consumption-based API which I have written about in the past. Industries that I have seen unique data assets in are the airline industry, storage unit pricing and analytics, agricultural data, and web-based data (traffic, web indexing, etc.). Markit made a great acquisition when they acquired IHS and merging with S&P has created a data powerhouse.