IHS the US-based market analysis group which recently bought IMS Research for $46m, has pushed further into the industrial market by buying Globalspec, the product information and digital media company that serves the engineering, manufacturing and related markets. IHS is paying Warburg Pincus $135m for the business.

“With the acquisition of GlobalSpec, IHS will transform engineering workflows and decision-making with seamless integration of information, insight and productivity tools,” says IHS chairman and CEO, Jerre Stead. “It will enable a dramatic transformation of our product design portfolio representing approximately 15% of our revenue.

“GlobalSpec, combined with our global scale and industry expertise, will create an even greater destination for trusted product information and technical insight for GlobalSpec’s global community of more than seven million engineers,” he adds. “We will market our solutions to a large segment of engineers around the world who currently do not use IHS services.”

GlobalSpec, founded in 1996, provides users with a search engine for more than 3,500 product, service and technology categories. It also supports a community of engineers who help each other to solve problems, and produces more than 70 product and industry e-newsletters.

GlobalSpec is headquartered in New York State and employs about 230 people. Its user base of more than seven million registered users grew by 500,000 in 2011.