Canadian MSP Starts New Year With Acquisition

Fully Managed, a managed services provider in Vancouver, Canada, has acquired HIT Business Solutions, an IT service provider in Edmonton, AB. The deal makes me wonder: Will MSPs accelerate their merger and acquisition activity in 2011 — or did the M&A market peak in 2010? Here are some thoughts.

First, details about the Fully Managed-HIT Business Solutions deal. According to a news announcement, all staff in Vancouver and Edmonton will be retained in addition to several new key positions being announced in both cities. The combined company will have 35 employees. Chris Day remains CEO of Fully Managed, while Sharleen Oborowsky joins as president. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Fully Managed focuses on managed services, IT consulting, project services and cloud hosting services. The company’s core focus is “Creating Peace of Mind” for customers.

To the best of my knowledge, this is one of the first MSP M&A deals of 2011. But more are coming — perhaps as soon as later this week (hint, hint).

Still, it will be difficult for 2011 to match 2010’s M&A activity. Most of last year’s deals involved MSPs that buying their way into new regions or acquiring VARs for their customer lists. However, a few deals truly created economies of scale. The HEIT-Simply Webb merger, for one, created an MSP with more scale serving the financial services vertical.

We’ll keep an eye on Fully Managed to see how the HIT Business Solutions acquisition turns out. And we might be back later this week with news of another MSP-related acquisition.

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