BT acquires Basilica

BT acquires snaps up fourth VAR in 18 months

VAR Basilica has been acquired by BT for an undisclosed sum.

Speaking exclusively to CRN Online, Basilica sales director Nick Wiltshire, said the firm will remain with its current branding for the time being. “Eventually we will be known at BT Basilica,” he said.

He confirmed that no redundancies would be made. “BT did not buy us to break us up or change what we do, they want us to do what we do now, but for their customers as well as ours. BT are making a play into the SME and mid market IT sector.”

Basilica will become part of BT Business, which is a division of BT Retail. The VAR has accreditations with Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft and Symantec.

Bill Murphy, managing director of BT Business, said in a statement: “Basilica is one of the best companies in the IT solutions field, meeting the needs of businesses. Basilica excels at providing IT solutions – designing, configuring and implementing IT.

“BT’s strategy is to free up businesses to do what they do best – running their business. We will take care of their communications and technology needs. This acquisition will help us deliver that proposition to our customers and it will underpin BT’s long-term growth in the unified communications sector.”

This is not BT’s first foray into buying a channel company, only last year the firm acquired dabs.com and previously to that purchased SkyNet and TNS, which have since formed the iNet division of the communications giant.

Further reading:
Is BT's acquisition of Dabs the right call?

BT acquires dabs.com

BT iNet raises VAR questions