Performanta CEO reveals rationale behind first acquisition under private equity owner

Guy Golan discusses the purchase of Identity Experts following private equity investment from Beech Tree

Performanta CEO Guy Golan believes the recent acquisition of Identity Experts will provide the business with a "greater reach" and is targeting further expansion in the near future.

The Maidenhead-based Check Point partner received backing from private equity firm Beech Tree last month in a deal which saw it acquire roughly half of the business.

Performanta made its first acquisition since the deal was confirmed in Microsoft Gold security partner and identity and access management (IAM) specialist Identity Experts.

Golan believes it will give the company an important foot in the door of Microsoft services while being able to reach a wider UK customer base.

"Our service offering did not include too much of Microsoft and we do recognise Microsoft as an important security player. From our perspective, it's important to take part in that area of cybersecurity," he said.

"The strategy of Performanta is very clear and it continues to be the same. Identity Experts' vision and strategy is pretty much aligned to Performanta, it's just a greater reach into the market by discussing with customers that we couldn't have reached before.

"Identity Experts has customers that Performanta do not have in the in the UK market and the other way around."

The 20 staff at Identity Experts will carry on working in their existing setup with plans for further integration in the long-term, Golan said.

He would not put a timeline on when that will take place but said the Identity Experts team will be merged with the existing Performanta group when both parties feel it is the right time to do so.

"We would like Identity Experts to continue to work as they do right now with minimal integration points and then take the time to really realise where the synergetic points for the relationship would take shape and then start integrating the people together," he added.

"But there's no timeline on that. We've already had a session with Identity Experts' team and the Performanta team to explain that things are running as they are. And in the foreseeable future, we're going to know more about where we're going to integrate.

"I don't think that they will be kept separate in the long-term because that will defeat the purpose of this whole acquisition, because we want to offer one Performanta type of message.

"But I do see that they keep themselves in their identity up until the moment that it will be natural for them, the organisation and our organisation to be amalgamated."

Beech Tree's investment in Performanta represents a continuing trend of private equity interest in MSPs and MSSPs.

Beech Tree itself has made investments in Manchester-based MSP BCN Group, unified comms player Wavenet, Microsoft cloud provider Transparity and cloud data management vendor Redstor, and their investment in Performanta is one of several similar deals already announced by other private equity firms this year.

It has seen businesses embark on subsequent expansion programmes, with companies opting to go down the acquisition route as a means of growing the existing business.

And Golan says the company is considering further acquisitions this year, highlighting two specific areas of interest.

"You never say never and it's something that we are considering, and we will continue considering, especially when our managed services platform is ready to be launched," he said.

"We're looking at two types of acquisition. IP acquisition, because I think when it comes to completion of services, we don't need to look at more acquisitions. The IP will provide us with an advantage in what we want to achieve.

"Secondly is a geographical growth. We will be looking at potentially expanding to the United States during next year.

"We are still making sure that the strategy is quite polished. But what I can say is that we are looking at the combination of both build and buy to achieve our vision and our strategic objectives."