Peak UpTime Grows With Another VAR Acquisition

Peak UpTime, a solution provider that is building itself into a mid-sized IT services provider one step at a time, took another step with its recent acquisition of another solution provider with a completely different business model.

In other words, it was a perfect fit, said Rolf Strasheim, director of client solutions at Peak UpTime, Tulsa, Okla.

Peak UpTime last month acquired ConXts Technology Solutions, also of Tulsa, making the company one of the largest solution providers serving the state of Oklahoma, Strasheim said. The company also serves customers in Missouri, Texas, and Louisiana.

ConXts is the seventh company to be assimilated into the entity now known as Peak UpTime, the first version of which was founded in 1983 as Apple dealer Computers Associates in Norman, Okla. It was known as DigiCore until July 2006, when it changed its name to Peak Methods.

Its most recent acquisition was the November, 2007 purchase of Oklahoma City, Okla.-based UpTime.

ConXts focuses almost exclusively on the K-12 market, and does a considerable amount of eRate business, Strasheim said. It does business with about 20 percent of the schools in Oklahoma. The company also custom-builds PCs, and sells a lot of "smartboard" digital whiteboard equipment, he said.

Peak UpTime, on the other hand, has a strong storage and networking focus in the commercial market, and is one of the largest solution provider partners of NetApp, Sunnyvale, Calif., Strasheim said.

"We hold state contracts for Juniper [Networks] and Extreme Networks," he said. "Given that ConXts is in K-12, all their clients are eligible to buy off our state contracts. So it's a good opportunity for us to capitalize on the business."

All the ConXts personnel have joined Peak UpTime, including Travis Flake, the former president of ConXts who now serves as Peak UpTime's manager of education solutions.