Transparity acquires Microsoft Azure consultancy Ballard Chalmers

Acquisition is part of Transparity’s goal to hit a headcount of 300 within the next two years

Transparity has acquitted cloud consultancy Ballard Chalmers, which will bolster its software development capabilities on Microsoft Azure.

UK-based Ballard Chalmers was founded in 2005 by Andrew Chalmers and Geoff Ballard. The firm claims to specialise in modernising legacy business applications and developing custom integrations for software platforms in the cloud.

Based in the south of England, in East Grinstead, Ballard Chalmers boasts five gold-level Microsoft badges including Application Development, Application Integration, Cloud Platform, Data Platform and Data Analytics.

Meanwhile Transparity, which is backed by Beech Tree Private Equity, is on a mission to double its headcount of 150 within the next two years through organic growth and acquisitions.

It claims the Ballard Chalmers acquisition will add new capabilities for clients who have already completed a "lift and shift" of their legacy datacentre to Azure and now want to boost costs and performance.

Transparity CEO David Jobbins said: "We are delighted to welcome the Ballard Chalmers staff to team Transparity and the extensive experience they bring in app modernisation. Since Transparity started, our incredible team has been the key to phenomenal growth as a pure play Microsoft partner. We are looking at likeminded acquisitions such as this to strengthen the core areas of our Microsoft strategy.

The Ballard Chalmers business will be integrated into Transparity over time, with the former set to benefit from Transparity's Expert MSP partner status and in-house Cloud Management Platform for Azure.

"Andrew and Geoff have built an excellent Microsoft-based development business, with an employee-focused culture very similar to Transparity. Our culture differentiates us, and any acquisition we make will put people at the heart of our decision making and subsequent integration processes."

Andrew Chalmers added: "Having worked in partnership with the Transparity team for some time, we knew that Transparity would be the right partner to work with in taking Ballard Chalmers forward to the next level.

"We have recognised for a while now that whilst we are great at what we do, customers are regularly asking us to manage their transition to Azure end-to-end and being able to join Transparity means we can offer the whole stack from platform design, best practice governance, datacentre migration, application modernisation and then provide a full 24x7 managed service on the whole solution."