Microsoft partner opens up on deal with Outsourcery buyer GCI

IA Cubed is now "a GCI company"

Microsoft partner IA Cubed has said GCI's acquisition of Outsourcery was the deciding factor in its decision to team up with it, rather than other companies it was in talks with.

The Scottish cloud partner, which has strong ties with Microsoft, is now known as IA Cubed, "a GCI company", but details of its deal with the firm remain confidential.

The partner said it had been in talks with a number of companies before the GCI tie up, but said the firm's decision to buy Outsourcery's assets swayed the decision in its favour because of the strong Microsoft capabilities the entity now has.

Outsourcery appointed administrators back in June, before GCI agreed to snap up its assets.

"We had two or three companies in play for IA Cubed at the time and... the Outsourcery thing was one of the main reasons we went with GCI," IA Cubed's business development director Margaret Totten told CRN. "I saw there was a massive opportunity to be a major player in the E5 proposition and it seemed to be the perfect mix."

Totten said Outsourcery had a "charismatic leader" in Piers Linney, as well as very strong brand, but said it lacked strategic focus.

"What GCI bring to the table [for Outsourcery] is a strong hold on strategy and infrastructure," she said. "They might not have had someone like GCI's [leadership team] who had a strong, business strategy focus."

Outsourcery's brand has been hoovered up into the GCI business, but IA Cubed will retain its moniker because it is "very strong", Totten said.

She said the deal with GCI will "change quite a lot" for IA Cubed.

"We're a small player and Microsoft has always said we punch above our weight in terms of size," she said. "We were a small, under 20 people organisation in Scotland, with a strong Scottish focus. When it came to bigger contracts like in the public sector, it is something we'd have to partner up with before. But now we are part of a 300-strong team and we have great capability so we can compete in a way we didn't before."