Forsythe Expands Reach With Another Deal

Forsythe Solutions Group, a Skokie, Ill.-based solution provider, has expanded its reach into new markets and new managed services offerings with the acquisition this month of the storage integration business assets of More Group.

At the same time, the online backup and disaster recovery business of the More Group, known as MoreStor Vault, along with an online storage customer base of 500 companies, was acquired by a startup, Vault USA. Both the More Group and Vault USA are based in Middleboro, Mass.

Vault USA was launched on April 1. Its CEO, Thomas Gelson, was president and CEO of the More Group.

For Forsythe, the acquisition brings it a profitable storage management integrator and trainer with 11 personnel and a new office in Middleboro, giving it a dramatically increased presence in New England, said Susan Pedro, Forsythe's district manager for New England.

It also brings Forsythe new first-call support offerings which it can take to its customers in other geographies, new backup and recovery processes, and training experience with storage software applications from two major vendors: CommVault Systems, of Oceanport, N.J., and the Tivoli line from IBM, of Armonk, NY.

The Middleboro office will become Forsythe's eighth training facility, and its first with CommVault and Tivoli Storage Manager applications, Pedro said.

Forsythe previously had a relationship IBM, but not with CommVault. "It is our intention to continue this (CommVault) relationship," she said. "We think they have excellent technology."

As part of the acquisition, Forsythe has also signed a deal with Vault USA to offer that company's online backup and disaster recovery services to its customers.

Terms of both deals were not disclosed.

Forsythe has 800 personnel across the country. Both it and the More Group are employee-owned businesses, which helps speed up the integration, Pedro said. "This makes it a great fit from a corporate and a cultural perspective," she said.

This is Forsythe's fourth acquisition in the last five years. The company acquired St. Paul, Minn.-based Information Security Technology, a security solution provider, last September.

The company acquired National Business Group, an Atlanta-based provider of Citrix Systems, Nokia, Check Point Software Technologies and RSA Security solutions, in February of 2004.

That acquisition followed the February, 2002 purchase of the security and consulting services assets and contracts of Telenisus, a Chicago-based solution provider of solutions to conduct secure business over the Internet.