Advantix has acquired TeraNova’s managed mobility business and the two organizations are launching a mobility, telecom expense management (TEM) and IoT channel-enabled supplier for partners.

Under the agreement, TeraNova is migrating its fixed and wireless managed services business, and key leadership and support personnel to Advantix. Both companies will continue to operate under their own names in their areas of expertise and also are collaborating to launch iXtera.

Advantix’s Nathan Brown

Nathan Brown, Advantix’s co-founder and chief operating officer, tells Channel Partners his company entered IoT about two years ago with a strong equity investment in THINaer, an IoT business intelligence platform provider. The next step was to “find an industry peer that could help us take our channel programs to the next level.”

“Through the process of working with TeraNova and Natasha (Royer Coons, TeraNova’s managing director) as the leader of that organization, it was a natural fit for us,” he said. “What ultimately brought our organizations together was the acceleration of the dominance that we wanted to take inside the channel and obviously we needed to be able to partner with somebody like Natasha who understood and was able to accelerate that growth.”

The acquisition pairs Advantix’s core competences in fixed and wireless expense management, help desk and customized reporting with TeraNova’s expertise in managed mobility, wireless networks and IoT offerings “to create a powerhouse,” according to Advantix.

Royer Coons will assume the roles of chief revenue officer at Advantix and CEO of iXtera.

“From the partner perspective, both organizations have been very partner-centric, but TeraNova is known for a real intimate touch, and we’re a very nimble, flexible organization, so we’re going to really harness that approach, but leverage the robustness and scalability of Advantix,” she said. “It allows us to provide the whole breadth of services and solutions to the partners via one-stop shop.”

TeraNova’s Natasha Royer Coons

When a partner comes to iXtera, they’ll have access to “all things managed mobility, whether it’s on a networking side or whether it’s to do with devices or expense management,” Royer Coons said.

iXtera will make it easier for channel partners to get increasingly active with mobility and IoT applications, Brown said.

“One of the sole driving factors behind iXtera is the ability to enable the partner,” he said. “So what iXtera solves for both the master and the partner is a single source for a partner to be able to come in and say here’s my opportunity, now help me build a solution, and that solution can ultimately spread across mobility, IoT or wireline TEM and utilities, but all of that can be bundled together and iXtera can help connect the dots between all these different suppliers out there. So the master and the partner now have one source of truth to be able to connect the dots and to connect all the different players.”

iXtera also will include a consulting arm that “helps that partner in conjunction with a partner bring a complete IoT or mobility, or TEM solution to the table,” Brown said.

“Also, the channel management team that’s going to be supporting the partners will be an elite corps of channel partner-focused, subject-matter experts in IoT, mobility and TEM,” Royer Coons said. “So the partner can go to a single source for what they need.”