By Khali Henderson

**Editor’s Note: Please click here for a recap of the biggest channel-impacting mergers in Q1 2013.**

In a move designed to accelerate its transformation into an IT services provider, EarthLink Inc. announced Monday an agreement to acquire CenterBeam Inc., a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based IT managed service provider, for $22 million.

CenterBeam provides remote managed IT services primarily to multilocation midsized businesses and operates a 140-person IT support center providing help desk, desktop technical support and application support services. The company serves more than 100 companies in 49 countries and six continents, but it has a focus on North American midmarket business with 100-4,000 employees.

EarthLink, an ISP and network services company, announced its entry into the IT services space with a suite of cloud-based services in April 2012. The services portfolio has grown to include additional services as well as an outsourced IT help desk.

The acquisition of CenterBeam will fast-track our IT services product development by providing us with critical scale and complementary product capabilities geared towards our multilocation business target market,” said EarthLink Chairman and CEO Rolla P. Huff, in a press statement. CenterBeams advanced set of products, tools and processes will enable us to quickly bring a robust set of remote managed IT services and collaboration services to market.”

Huff also noted that CenterBeams IT support center will provide expertise, scale and redundancy to EarthLink TechCare remote help desk, which was launched last summer.

EarthLink also intends to accelerate its product capabilities for hosted collaboration services and unified end-point management services. The company plans to offer CenterBeams 365+ Enterprise Cloud service, which provides a full suite of collaboration services, along with its nationwide Hosted Voice platform, through its existing distribution channels.

Additionally, EarthLink will integrate CenterBeams service control portal with its myLink next-generation control portal.  

Further, a company spokesperson told Channel Partners that EarthLink intends to get into the managed services business with a remote monitoring and management (RMM) practice leveraging CenterBeam’s current offering.

Additionally, the spokesperson said EarthLink will purchase the assets and ongoing operations of CenterBeam, which include customer accounts and contracts, procedures, products, intellectual property and infrastructure. More details will be provided at the close, which is expected to be in third quarter of 2013, the spokersperson said.

EarthLink also will employ all of CenterBeam’s approximately 175 employees. Announcements about executive leadership and organizational structure will be announced following the close, the spokesperson said.