Infotech Disrupts IT Advisory with API Platform and Zluri Acquisition

ARLINGTON, Va. – October 14, 2026 – In a move that signals a fundamental transformation in the IT research and advisory sector, the company formerly known as Info-Tech Research Group has officially rebranded to Infotech. Alongside this new corporate identity, the firm announced the global rollout of CIO Analytics, an innovative API-driven advisory platform designed to link live operational data directly with expert research and AI-assisted tooling. Concurrently, the Virginia-based organization revealed the completion of its first acquisition in its 30-year history, purchasing SaaS management and identity governance provider Zluri.

These simultaneous announcements mark a pivotal moment for the firm, which recently surpassed $300 million in annual revenue following a staggering 340 percent growth trajectory over the past seven years. By integrating Zluri's advanced capabilities into the new CIO Analytics platform, Infotech is explicitly moving away from the traditional, document-heavy consultancy model. The strategic pivot puts direct competitive pressure on legacy advisory incumbents by offering enterprise leaders a unified system to understand performance, manage risk, control spending, and improve execution across their entire IT landscape.

Advisory Reimagined: Swapping Static Reports for Real-Time APIs

For decades, the enterprise technology advisory market has been dominated by static PDFs, generic maturity models, and generalized benchmarking reports. However, the rapid proliferation of generative AI has begun commoditizing standard market research. To remain indispensable to IT leaders, advisory firms are realizing they must ingest live operational data to provide context-specific, actionable guidance.

Infotech's launch of CIO Analytics directly addresses this industry-wide gap. By connecting to members' operational systems via APIs, the platform grounds analyst guidance in real-time IT data. This continuous telemetry is then combined with the firm's established methodologies and frameworks. The platform debuted in beta at the Info-Tech LIVE 2026 conference in Las Vegas earlier this year, where discussions heavily explored how AI is fundamentally changing the CIO role. Registration for the beta program significantly exceeded initial targets, underscoring a strong appetite among enterprise CIOs for connected advisory tools.

"AI and analytics are nothing without the right data, and the right data is hard to act on without benchmarks and industry-leading insight that show what 'good' looks like. This is especially true for IT," says Infotech's Chief Executive Officer, Tom Zehren. "That's the value CIO Analytics brings to our members. Early customer feedback has been overwhelmingly positive as it connects their own data with our research, benchmarks, and analysts without delay. Infotech's new value proposition enables organizations to make better informed decisions faster. Adding Zluri's expertise and capabilities helps us bring that visibility to more areas of IT."

The platform launches with three initial modules: Service Desk Analytics, Application Discovery, and Identity Governance and Administration. By automating the manual discovery work that typically slows down consulting engagements, analysts can dedicate significantly more time to interpretation, prioritization, and strategic action planning. Service Desk Analytics, for example, helps IT leaders assess performance across customer satisfaction, efficiency, cost, workload, and service quality, bringing overall performance and individual metrics into a single dashboard view.

The M&A Playbook: A Milestone Acquisition Fuels Hypergrowth

The acquisition of Zluri is a landmark event for Infotech, representing its first-ever corporate purchase since its founding by Joel McLean in 1997. While the financial terms of the transaction—advised by Solomon Partners—were not officially disclosed, Zluri’s venture financing history provides critical context for the scale of the deal. Founded in 2020 by Ritish Reddy, Chaithanya Yambari, and Sethu Meenakshisundaram, Zluri had previously raised over $32 million across several funding rounds, backed by prominent investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners, MassMutual Ventures, Kalaari Capital, and Endiya Partners. Prior to the acquisition, the startup's valuation was estimated to be between $50 million and $100 million.

This targeted acquisition highlights how privately held research providers are leveraging strategic M&A to challenge publicly traded giants. By bringing Zluri’s proprietary technology in-house, Infotech bypasses years of internal development to immediately offer enterprise-grade SaaS discovery and governance APIs. As an Infotech company, Zluri will continue serving its existing customers while contributing its core capabilities to the CIO Analytics platform.

"Over the past seven years, Infotech has more than quadrupled in size and has surpassed $300 million in annual revenue because we have always stayed close to our core value proposition, which is delivering unparalleled member value," says Infotech Chairman Joel McLean. "The launch of API-driven advisory through CIO Analytics, alongside the acquisition of Zluri, reflects where we believe the market is going, toward advice grounded in an organization's own operating data, not solely in static inputs or generalized best practices. We're combining operational data, AI, and human expertise to inform the decisions IT leaders need to make now. And personally, I love what the Zluri team has built. I'm excited to welcome them to Infotech. As organizations enter and compete in the AI era, IT leaders need advice the legacy advisory firms simply are not willing or able to provide."

Tackling SaaS Sprawl and Identity Governance Head-On

The integration of Zluri’s core technology into CIO Analytics addresses two of the most pressing, board-level priorities for modern IT operations: SaaS sprawl and identity governance. As enterprise environments grow increasingly complex, IT operations directors and security architects face mounting challenges related to shadow IT, runaway software spending, and the proliferation of non-human identities interacting with corporate systems.

Zluri’s platform brings a massive library of direct integrations to the table. This allows organizations to uncover their entire software stack, manage usage effectively, streamline onboarding and offboarding processes, and conduct rigorous access audits across growing application portfolios. By feeding this granular, real-time data directly into the CIO Analytics dashboard via the Application Discovery and Identity Governance and Administration modules, IT leaders gain a structured risk picture alongside immediate advisory recommendations.

"The next era of IT won't be won by software or by legacy advisory alone. It will be won by bringing them together. From our first conversations with Infotech, it was clear this was the right home for Zluri. We share the same values and ambition for what we can build for CIOs and their teams," says Ritish Reddy, Co-founder and CEO of Zluri. "Zluri gives leaders real-time control over identities and access across increasingly complex environments, and Infotech gives them the insight to know where to focus and how to act with that information. We're proud to be part of the operating system IT leaders need for the AI era."

Putting Competitive Pressure on Legacy Incumbents

The launch of a fully integrated, API-connected advisory engine creates a stark contrast between Infotech's new operating model and the traditional approaches maintained by legacy research giants like Gartner and Forrester. While incumbent firms offer vast repositories of broad market research and peer insights, they have historically struggled to bridge the gap between generalized best practices and the specific, real-time operational realities of individual clients. Infotech is addressing this gap directly, providing a current view of the systems, resources, and business priorities that shape where IT leaders need to focus and how they execute.

Infotech is betting that the future of IT advisory lies in continuous, data-connected relationships rather than episodic consulting engagements. The CIO Analytics platform also powers AI-Assisted Advisory Services, utilizing artificial intelligence to help leaders create real, operational deliverables tailored to their exact environments that are ready to deploy. Crucially, the firm maintains that human analysts remain responsible for the quality of the finished work, ensuring a human in the loop approach that mitigates the risks of AI hallucinations and generic outputs.

"CIO Analytics is designed to keep advisory connected to the tools IT teams rely on every day," says Liam Nediger, Chief Technology Officer at Infotech and executive lead for CIO Analytics. "Service Desk Analytics, Application Discovery, and Identity Governance and Administration are the first examples of that approach. The next wave of modules will extend the same model into other areas where CIOs need a clearer basis for setting priorities, managing risk, and achieving measurable results."

Independent industry analysts note that this strategic pivot could force a broader reckoning within the research sector. As enterprise technology buyers increasingly demand measurable outcomes and immediate returns on investment from their advisory partnerships, the ability to directly ingest service desk metrics and identity logs to prove the efficacy of strategic recommendations will likely become a baseline requirement rather than a premium feature. By combining independent scale, agile operations, and a clear focus on actionable data, Infotech is positioning itself to capture significant market share in the next phase of the research and advisory industry's evolution.