'Limitless potential' for Freedom Communications, says new owner GCI

Outsourcery buyer and managed services provider GCI acquires UC firm for undisclosed sum

GCI has snapped up UC firm Freedom Communications, claiming the company has "unlimited potential" as it was previous run as a lifestyle business.

Managed services provider GCI bought Outsourcery last summer and Microsoft partner IA Cubed later in the year - two of five acquisitions for the company in the last 12 months.

GCI's CEO Adrian Thirkill told CRN that he is optimistic about the future of the combined businesses.

"The founders wanted to retire," he said. "We were interested because it had been run as a lifestyle business and the potential is limitless if you run it as a 'proper' business. I say 'proper', but if people want to run a lifestyle business, that's fine. They had an Alcatel Lucent base but they moved to Microsoft Skype for Business - they have about 40,000 seats, so that's [good]. I had conversations with Microsoft about them because we like to understand what they're like. UC-as-a-service is a £75bn market globally, so it's the right thing to do."

Thirkill said discussions to buy Freedom surfaced only three months ago, but that his company has sealed deals in shorter timespans.

"[The Freedom acquisition] took a lot longer than Outsourcery - that was six weeks," he said. "But if you have a strategy and you execute well, and you know what you're going to do, then why hang around?"

The IT channel is in the midst of a consolidation bonanza at reseller, distributor and vendor level. But Thirkill said that not all M&A activity is a good sign.

"Some people are consolidating wisely and with sharp focus, but some people are doing it just because they have a lot of debt and they think if they keep buying people it will help them pay off their debt," he said. "Our leverage at the moment is less than one times EBIT, or 0.5 now we made this. Some people out there are eight or nine times leveraged on debt. That's not somewhere I would want to be, because I wouldn't sleep."

Thirkill claims that GCI is one of only 10 UK Microsoft Cloud Service Providers accredited to serve both the direct and indirect market; one of 13 on the Skype Operations Framework; and one of 23 Microsoft High Touch Partners in the UK.

Clare Barclay, Microsoft's general manager for small and mid-market solutions and partners welcomed the move.

"When I met with GCI on their stand at Future Decoded in London a few short weeks ago, I said that I was confident about the opportunities we had to work together and I am delighted to see GCI forging ahead now with further unified communications and cloud investments," she said.

"Freedom Communications is of course already well known to us as a leading Microsoft partner and has a great track record. The collective strengths and learnings across the blended GCI, Outsourcery, Freedom Communications operation means that customers are in a great position to benefit from its expertise in Microsoft Office 365, Skype for Business and Azure. The age of digital transformation is upon us, and it is organisations like GCI that will help customers truly reap the benefits."