Nathan Lowe (ASI Solutions) - (Photo - Christine Wong)
Business technology and IT services provider ASI Solutions has acquired BEarena, a trans-Tasman specialist provider of virtual Infrastructure, public and hybrid cloud solutions, managed services and back-up and disaster recovery platforms.
“We have identified BEarena as a leader in enterprise cloud technology with a long history of bringing leading enterprise vendors into Australia and now New Zealand” ASI Solutions’ managing director Nathan Lowe said. “And BEarena’s strong NZ presence and consistent growth allows the business to expand our offerings into the New Zealand market.”
While the acquisition is set to see BEarena swiftly integrated into the broader ASI Solutions offering portfolio, BEarena’s New Zealand operation, which claims offices in Auckland and Wellington, will operate independently, becoming an ASI Solutions company but keeping the BEarena name.
According to Sydney-headquartered ASI Solutions, the continued independence of the NZ business is aimed at ensuring continuity for NZ customers and allow them to leverage ASI Solutions' resources, scale and product offerings.
BEarena’s two Sydney-based founders and directors, Darren Ashley and Kirstie Elderfield, will remain in the business and expand their roles to work with the wider ASI Solutions team.
The deal, the value of which has not been disclosed, is set to imbue ASI Solutions with an established portfolio of enterprise customers and working relationships within the cloud enterprise space.
“The acquisition will give ASI access to additional enterprise businesses to grow our Cloud Services portfolio along with additional managed service growth, and will give us the additional volume to provide scale to our product and managed services offerings,” said Lowe. “We have made this acquisition because of BEarena’s team, relationships and market leader status.
“There are not too many organisations in Australia who have got the history in cloud like they do, and we plan to preserve and learn from BEarena’s knowledge and client relationships in the enterprise space,” he said.
For Ashley, who is BEarena's managing director, the deal is expected to give his company the resources needed to take on new opportunities at scale.
“BEarena’s success has been based on selection of products that solve our customers’ challenges in a simple and cost-effective way, delivered by a team that has a maniacal drive for customer service and excellence,” Ashley said. “Therefore, when working with partners we have always looked for the same qualities to guarantee the experience to our customers, and to complement our existing resources. In ASI we see all the same qualities, but at scale.
“This is key to BEarena’s existing customer base as our growth over the last thirteen years has generated a huge amount of opportunity, which we can now address with the ASI acquisition. Further, our current customer base has almost no overlap, as with our catalogue of services meaning we can deliver more services to our existing and new clients with zero friction."
“All these factors clearly illustrated ASI as the perfect partner for BEarena, and both the management team and our customers are extremely excited for the future within the new group,” he added.
The acquisition comes just months after ASI Solutions acquired Canberra-based managed service provider Forward IT in a bid to boost its government play in the nation’s capital.
