Logicalis claims acquisition will strengthen IBM and HP relationships
Integrator bought CSF Solutions last week
Integrator Logicalis has claimed its latest UK acquisition will strengthen its vendor relationships with IBM and Hewlett-Packard (HP).
Last week, Logicalis acquired VAR CSF Solutions (CRN Online, 4 December), which addresses the IBM mainframe market and servers from HP.
Ian Cook, chief executive for European operations at Logicalis, told CRN: “The CSF acquisition increases our scope and gives us the whole of the IBM range to mirror our US activity. It also gives us great HP revenue.
“Also, we get a tier 3 data centre and we can build on our managed services on both the networking and computing sides. CSF had a managed service operation, but we have not acquired that.”
Cook added that Logicalis provides hosting and it is looking to boost its application management capabilities.
“On the acquisition front we have not got anything else we are looking at, but I’m sure we will,” Cook said. “Our thrust is not just to get bigger and bigger, we also need to increase our margins. We need to increase our skills set, possibility in IP call centres. We may acquire or build into this area, but we see this as a growing sector.”
Mark O’Hara, managing director of reseller Hydra, said: “Logicalis is going for the server, desktop and storage markets, but the margins on servers are pretty low. However, if this is a response to customer demand, then this is a good idea.”