Forrester still brings in more revenue. But the gap is closing fast, and the executives both firms sell to say analyst reports have little to do with how they buy.

On October 14, Info-Tech Research Group renamed itself Infotech. It used the same announcement to launch CIO Analytics, an advisory platform that connects to clients' IT systems, and to close its first acquisition in 30 years, a SaaS-management startup called Zluri.

Dropping "Research Group" was a small edit with a pointed message. The company doesn't want to be known mainly for research anymore.

That raises a fair question for anyone who follows the analyst firms: is Infotech now the second-largest end-user advisory firm after Gartner? The question matters less than it used to. Executives aren't finding products through Gartner, or any analyst firm, the way they did five years ago. For most buying decisions, nobody really needs Gartner's advice anymore.

Forrester is still bigger, for now

Forrester expects 2026 revenue of $350 million to $360 million. In 2022 it reported $537.8 million, so the company has lost roughly a third of its revenue in four years.

Infotech is private and doesn't publish audited numbers. It says it has passed $300 million in annual revenue after growing 340% over seven years, and The Globe and Mail's growth ranking put its three-year growth at 113%. That leaves the two firms about $50 million apart, with one growing and the other shrinking.

Forrester's latest quarter didn't change that picture. Revenue fell 8.7% to $86.1 million, contract value slipped 3.5% and consulting revenue dropped 31%. CEO George Colony described the business as "stabilizing," which is fair if you compare it with the steeper declines earlier in the year.

If Infotech keeps growing anywhere near its recent pace, it should pass Forrester on revenue sometime in 2027. Until then, Forrester holds the #2 spot by a shrinking margin.

Executives have stopped shopping by Magic Quadrant

Gartner is in a different weight class. Last week it raised its 2026 revenue outlook to about $6.4 billion, and nobody is about to pass it. What it's losing is influence over how companies buy.

Ask a CIO or CMO how they found the last piece of software they bought, and you'll rarely hear Gartner come up. The survey data says the same. TrustRadius found that only 13% of tech buyers used analyst reports to inform a purchase in 2026, down 63% since 2022. Seventy-four percent used peer reviews, and buyers rated free trials, demos and their own past experience as the most influential inputs.

Investors noticed early. Gartner's stock fell by about half in 2025, then dropped 31% in one day in February after contract growth stalled. By late last year, some clients were cutting back on contracts while they tried out AI research tools.

There's a telling detail in how Gartner shows up in AI search, too. One analysis found that 96% of AI citations of Gartner pointed to its Reviews product, its peer review site. Gated research made up less than 1%. When AI tools cite Gartner, they're mostly citing what other buyers wrote.

Gartner isn't going anywhere. Contract value grew 2.5% in the third quarter, the third quarter in a row that growth picked up, and large enterprises keep renewing. But that's slow growth for a company that used to post double digits, and it looks more like existing customers holding on than new ones signing up.

Why Infotech dropped "Research Group"

The new name tells clients that Infotech wants to be judged on more than its reports.

CIO Analytics connects to a member's own IT systems and combines that data with AI analysis, Infotech's research and its analysts. The first modules cover service desk analytics, application discovery and identity governance, and Zluri's software will feed into the platform. Chairman Joel McLean describes the approach as "combining operational data, AI, and human expertise."

The bet makes sense given where buyers are. A chatbot can now pull together the general consensus on a software category in seconds, which hurts any firm whose main product is a write-up of that consensus. It's much harder for a chatbot to tell a CIO what their own service desk data shows, or how similar companies handled the same problem.

Forrester is reacting to the same pressure. This quarter it launched AI Access Plus, Team Solutions and a Claude integration, which give clients new ways to get at its research inside tools they already use. That makes Forrester's research easier to reach. Infotech is trying to sell clients something other than research.

What brand teams should take from this

Whether Infotech or Forrester ranks second matters mostly to Infotech and Forrester. For B2B marketers, the more useful point is that an analyst placement doesn't carry much weight on its own anymore.

A spot in a Magic Quadrant or a Forrester Wave still helps in some enterprise deals. But if buyers only ever see it inside a gated report, it does little to help them find you in the first place. Buyers now build shortlists from peer reviews, online communities and recommendations from people who've used the product. Those are also the sources AI tools lean on heavily when someone asks them for a recommendation.

That should push more brand budget toward customer advocacy, review programs and content that AI tools can find and cite. Analyst relations still belongs in the mix, but it can't be the whole plan.

Infotech will probably overtake Forrester in 2027. By then, the executives both firms are courting will have spent another year asking each other what to buy.