Despite the horrendous economy, regional managed service providers are merging to form national MSPs that blanket the United States. The latest example: Azaleos and M3 Technology Group have merged to create a coast-to-coast managed service provider whose clients include Chiquita, Alcon and Wendy’s/Arby’s. Azaleos now claims to have “the highest concentration of Exchange and Unified Communications expertise outside of Microsoft.” Here are details and observations.

The merged company, specializing in remotely managed Microsoft Exchange services, will operate under the Azaleos brand. Azaleos also launched a monitoring and management service for Active Directory. Financial terms about the deal were not disclosed. You can read more about Azaleos’ services further below.

Let’s Make A Deal

But I’d prefer to focus on the bigger picture: Despite the economy, MSPs are attending peer events, openly discussing their financials with trusted MSPs from other regions, and pursuing merger and acquisition activity. This is the third major MSP merger to land on our MSPmentor M&A Tracker in 2009 — and I’m sure we’ve overlooked plenty of additional deals.

Multiple readers now ping me daily, seeking more information about how to successfully drive MSP merger and acquisition activity. I don’t have all the answers (asking me about MSP mergers is a bit like asking a baseball writer how to manage trades). But I know this: M&A activity will accelerate as regional MSPs seek national and international scale.

Details, Please

The latest such deal — involving Azaleos and M3 — has the following components, according to an Azaleos release:

Key Azaleos managed services will include:

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