The Drupal Ecosystem is Consolidating Rapidly (Again)
Back in 2012, there was a wave of mergers and acquisitions amongst Drupal agencies.
The most high-profile merger involved four different companies forming Wunderkraut, which now has around 170 team members.
There was also the Phase2 and Treehouse partnership, plus the merger of DrupalConnect and NorthStudio in Canada. And, although they were smaller deals, Acquia picked up Cyrve, Growing Venture Solutions, Drupal Scout and Mollom.
In 2012, acquisitions were so common that they became a community joke.
Fast forward to 2015, and we’re seeing a second, much larger round of mergers and acquisitions:
- ProPeople, Blink Reaction and Bysted merged into FFW, with 420 employees.
- MediaCurrent became part of the larger Code and Theory group, forming a team of over 350 people.
- Phase2 added OpenSourcery and SuperStar Media, bringing their headcount over 160.
- GovDelivery acquired NuCivic for their Drupal expertise.
- Code Drop and PreviousNext merged to form a larger Australian agency.
As in 2012, there have been some smaller deals too, including Pantheon acquiring Nodesquirrel and i-Kos acquiring Mogdesign.
My apologies if I’ve missed any deals. Let me know in the comments and I’ll add them to the list.
I’m not an expert in business cycles and couldn’t tell you why these deals come in clusters. But it’s clear that, right now in 2015, the Drupal ecoystem is undergoing a second wave of consolidation.
