ANS completes Alpha heavy lifting

Mancunian VARs consolidate offices, brands and supplier relationships

VAR ANS Group has completed the front-end integration of Alpha, two months after acquiring the storage integrator for close to £5m.

Staff previously based at Alpha's Stockport headquarters have joined ANS's Manchester base, while ANS's London staff have been consolidated into Alpha's City office in Fenchurch Avenue.

The acquisition created a £35m-turnover firm with skills in Cisco, VMware and NetApp. ANS managing director Paul Sweeney said the duo's supplier relationships have also now been collapsed.

The enlarged firm will buy all of its NetApp gear from Avnet (Alpha previously used Arrow ECS), while Magirus will be its port of call for VMware (where Alpha previously had a relationship with SDG) and Cisco.

At the same time, ANS has taken on another wing in the building that houses its Manchester HQ, shelling out £100,000 on new pre-staging, managed services and training facilities.

"We took over Alpha on 1 November and on 1 January had integrated everything into ANS in terms of location, branding and where we buy from," said Sweeney.

He added that the back-office integration work would begin in ANS's next financial year starting April.