Acquisition Strategy Put Forward by GreenPages

The CEO at Kittery, Maine-based GreenPages Technology Solutions has announced that the $110 million services power is looking to make acquisitions as it seeks to push hybrid cloud enablement through its Cloud Management as a Service (CMaaS) offering.

Dupler said: "We are definitely looking at making other acquisitions. We see solution providers that understand the need to drive forward into a hybrid cloud world and want to jump on the wagon with us and move forward into the future, like Qoncert this year and LogicsOne last year. We continue to be in active discussions around acquisitions."

GreenPages recently acquired a partner of Cisco called Qoncert, which is based in Tampa, Florida. The move integrates GreenPages' LogicsOne, Cisco's 2013 SMB Partner of the Year (Americas East), with the Cisco 2012 Southeast Commercial Partner of the Year. LogicsOne was acquired by GreenPages in March of 2012; that company is a managed services provider based in Atlanta, Georgia, and the move provided enhanced virtualization and cloud consulting and management talent.

GreenPages-LogicsOne's unified communications collaboration technical team, with the Qoncert deal, brings the combined team number to over 90. Technical talent is significant, particularly as a CMaaS sales offensive is pushed through by GreenPages.

Dupler stated: "The skill sets within our technology team continue to change. The technical team is scaling. We are in hiring mode."

GreenPages is also currently looking to set its LogicsOne consulting organization apart as a separate brand, so that its CMaaS platform can be accessed by other solution providers, ISVs and OEMs via a "powered by LogicsOne" model.

The fast-moving IT market is encouraging traditional solution providers to consider making deals which can compete in the hybrid cloud era. Dupler said: "This has never been an easy industry. It is not for the faint of heart. Solution providers understand the world is changing and they need to migrate their business models. Sometimes they lack the financial resources and talent to make that migration. But they get what is going on. Those are the type of solution providers that are good candidates for us to be speaking with either to partner with or acquire."

Dupler added that the acquisition plan was a "smart scale" strategy. He commented: "We don't buy to get big," he said. "We buy to add capabilities or to establish new marquee customer relationships. This is not a roll-up. We make moves when it fits in for the strategic building of our business."

The CMaas product is key to a five-year plan to develop a $300 million business; Dupler predicts that this will see an 857 percent growth rate within that time period, and will increase GreenPages' annuity-based services from $7 million today to $60 million in 2018.

Dupler noted: "We have been very forward leaning with cloud. We have made the investments. We have got the hybrid cloud enablement skills. We have solutions that the market needs right now and when we look around at the demographics of the VAR community you have got two types of companies: companies that don't have the size, scale and resources to really make those investments and make the shift (to hybrid cloud) and some larger companies that either didn't believe it or didn't see it and now have customers that need help. We have a solution that can add a lot of value for them and their clients." (CY) Link