ITEC grabs assets of Solutions4Comms

The channel support services sector has witnessed further consolidation, with ITEC Intelligent Services acquiring the assets and customer base of datacomms support firm Solutions4Comms.

Solutions4Comms boss John Ibison will become Berkshire-based ITEC’s commercial manager as part of the deal.

It is not the first merger in the channel support sector in recent times, with Networks First last year grabbing rival Access Network Services (channelweb, 11 June, 2007).

Ross Teague, chief executive of ITEC, told CRN: “Solutions4Comms was a relatively small business and couldn’t grow beyond where it was. It was going backwards slightly so before it became terminal John took the view that he wanted to be part of something bigger.”

The purchase will add about 20 resellers, systems integrators and distributors to ITEC’s client base.

Teague said Solutions4Comms worked primarily in the legacy datacoms field with skills around vendors such as Lantronix.

This is in contrast to ITEC’s focus on vendors such as Cisco, Huawei, Avaya, Riverbed and Tandberg.

Before the deal ITEC outsourced its legacy datacoms work to Solutions4Comms. But Teague stressed traditional break-fix support will not be a core business moving forward and that Solutions4Comms’ client base was the main rationale for the deal.

“We do not want to build a legacy support business with field engineers in vans reacting to fault calls," he said. "We have a futuristic model where we have a centralised group of engineers carrying out proactive services such as remote network management and monitoring. We are not a man in a van doing break-fix.”

Teague also claimed ITEC differed from other channel support providers such as Networks First or Comms-care because it delivers services on a much larger scale using a global network of partners.