On the heels of completing its integration of WTG, AppSmart has set its sights on another master agent, this time acquiring Telegration.

Telegration provides partners with technology services from more than 150 suppliers. It offers a range of voice, internet, long distance, mobility, cable, data, cloud, hosted PBX and managed IT services.

AppSmart’s Vince Bradley

Vince Bradley, AppSmart’s co-CEO, tells Channel Partners with the master agent’s acquisitions, AppSmart is a technology marketplace, and “actually a hybrid.”

“It has pieces of a master agent in it and it has pieces of a provider in it,” he said. “We’re sort of making history here because this has never happened before. This is a very unique model that has not existed, so we’re kind of creating something new.”

In terms of competitors, the closest would be Ingram Micro, but “they’re a disti, so it’s very different,” Bradley said.

“Ingram Micro comes from the equipment world and the distributor world, so sure, they’re catching up, and as they develop and mature their marketplace, I think they could definitely be a formidable competitor, but we have a big head start because we’ve been doing this for so long,” he said.

Effective immediately, Telegration becomes an AppSmart company. AppSmart’s catalog includes cloud, voice, connectivity, IoT (mobility/energy), services and support.

Tim Basa, Telegration’s president, who joins AppSmart as vice president of sales, said the coming together enables the “sum to be greater than the parts.”

AppSmart’s Tim Basa

“WTG has superpowers, Telegration has superpowers, and it’s sort of that cartoon where you bump fists and there’s this explosion [with] better support, better tools, better training, better sources of supply and selection,” he said. “We all had strong contracts, but now those contracts become truly best in class, which is also I think unique in the marketplace. Think about if everybody were able to look at each other’s contracts, now we’re sharing best practices, best contracts, and I think that equals a better experience over all.”

Telegration also is a member of The Alliance Partners, the largest consortium of IT, telecom and cloud technology distributors in the United States dedicated to fostering the best business outcomes for the channel.

AppDirect acquired both WTG and NeoCloud to create a new unit called AppSmart.

What made Telegration a good acquisition target was its leadership team and its customized version of Salesforce, Bradley said. In terms of fitting into AppSmart’s ongoing strategic expansion, “it has a lot to do with geography,” he said.

“When you look at WTG being in the West and certainly having agents all over the country, but not so deep in the Midwest — the geography made a lot of sense,” he said. “I think systems also made a lot of sense. In addition to Salesforce, Tim has been very instrumental in creating a lot of other systems in their company for sales, for marketing communications and other sales enabling systems. So I think those are two that are also really key and I think that’s really helped at the end of the day to make it easier to do business and to make it more strategic. So the geography is expanding, the systems are expanding and it’s creating an ease of doing business for distribution.”

Basa said Telegration has a nine-step integration process and its partners will receive regular updates to answer all of their questions and make sure they’re clear on the immediate and forthcoming benefits from the acquisition.

“There’s never been a better time to be a channel partner, and AppSmart is positioned to grow and empower the channel partners who want to empower their customers with the right solutions at the right time,” he said. “We feel like the market timing is right to have big expansion and maybe a little disruption.”

In terms of what’s on the horizon for AppSmart, Bradley said “we’re just getting started from the perspective of looking at that platform and then building on it, and then sort of augmenting it, and now looking at where we can do better.”