XMG, the start-up analyst firm with offices in Canada and the Asia/Pacific region, has been making good progress. In case you don’t know it, the company is full of ex-META Group analysts including William Carlson, Edan Puritt, Sylvia Stolk, Eugene Talasch, Lauro Vives and Michael Zammit.

There are no prizes for guessing what XMG stands for! Indeed, the XMG name reminds us a bit of test equipment maker LTX. It was founded some long-ago December by people from Teradyne. Reportedly, and this was never officially denied, the name meant “Left Teradyne at Xmas.”

XMG was established in the middle of last year by Lauro Vives, the Canadian ex-META VP who managed that firm’s business in the Philippines. Vives is on the board of Matreya Group, the British Columbia venture consulting firm which seems to be supportive of XMG. These roots explain the firm’s distinctive geographic coverage: a HQ in British Columbia; its Asia/Pacific HQ in the Philippines (alongside four other AP offices, including a Singapore boutique acquired in November) but no offices elsewhere.

The firm’s picked up a number of impressive clients and, oddly, the model of the firm’s corporate and vendor advisory businesses seem rather similar to META’s. In May this year Larry DeBoever, formerly META Group’s president, joined as member of the Board.

Lighthouse can’t see any reason for XMG to not develop close links with Experton and other former META colleagues like Doug Laney and Nick Caffarra’s Evalubase Research. Evalubase already partnered with Bloor Research and, since Laney is also listed as an XMG analyst, his firm seems to have already had preliminary discussions with XMG.