Channel veteran Ian Smith, chief executive of Fujin Technologies, plans to create a £100m storage reseller in the next 12 months by making an acquisition every quarter.
Last week, Smith kicked off his aggressive strategy with the acquisition of storage reseller Posetiv for £4.6m. London-based Posetiv has 50 staff and achieved turnover of £18m last year.
“Since the sale of both equIP and Matrix Communications last year, Fujin has been reviewing the market to see where it should carry out its next ‘buy and build’ acquisition strategy,” Smith told CRN. “Storage is an expanding area of IT. There are lots of service opportunities now associated with storage. It is also still quite fragmented, so it is ripe for consolidation.”
Posetiv will continue to trade under its own brand for the foreseeable future, but Fujin will change its name to XploITe to reflect its developing strategy, according to Smith.
“The Fujin brand name will be retained for our mobile products,” Smith added.
Jason Rabbetts, managing director of storage VAR StorPoint, said: “I underwent an MBO [management buy-out] to create StorPoint from GlassHouse because I believed that there was a good integration-play to be made in the storage space. The opportunity definitely exists for Fujin, but it remains to be seen whether it can acquire two or three more VARs this year.”
Neil Ledger, founder of storage distributor VADition, said: “If Smith plans to buy one VAR a quarter then at least one of those will be a pretty large one. It is good to see that he is validating the sector of the market we are operating in.”
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