Integration Partners Divests New York Business To InterCloud Systems

Integration Partners has divested its New York enterprise and service provider business to InterCloud Systems, the companies announced Friday.

The move will help Integration Partners continue the growth it has seen over the past 18 to 24 months, co-founders Bart Graf and David Nahabedian told CRN. Although Integration Partners is divesting around $25 million of its approximately $100 million to $125 million in topline revenue, the co-founders said they expect to regain or even outgrow the revenue divested over the course of the next year.

"I think from the outside you think 'skinnying' down the business. It's the complete opposite. It's an opportunity to fix up a problem that wasn't going to go away and to re-enter the market," Nahabedian said. "We absolutely see this as an opportunity."

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The new growth will come from turning back, after a period of rampant growth, toward the company's culture, employees and customer service, as well as adding new solutions and technologies to the company portfolio, Graf said. The dramatic growth over the past 18 to 24 months has stressed some areas of weakness, which the company has already worked to remedy, he said. The company, Graf said, has already begun hiring to accommodate for the growth.

"We've made significant investments throughout 2014 in terms of how we're running our customer, the tools, the backend; we've brought in some new personnel, [and we're staying] focused on culture and making sure were aligned from a customer service perspective," Graf said.

The company has also brought on new executives to help facilitate the growth in certain verticals and geographic markets, including George Miller, former TorreyPoint vice president of sales, and David Raftery, former account manager at Nortel.

The company expansion includes re-entering the New York market, though initially through different customers due to a provision of the deal.

Graf said that partners were initially hesitant at the potential loss of business with the divestiture but have been getting on board with the decision once they were reassured that the company would be reentering the New York market in the coming year.

Andon Lucas, partner account manager at Juniper Networks, said he was very skeptical when he first heard the news, but the business plan going forward for Integration Partners has reassured him.

"From a partner perspective, it's obviously a little disconcerting, a company separating. I think both principals on both sides ... have done a really good job of communicating with partners like Juniper, and I think it's just made it easy. Once it's been finalized, now we sort of have our marching orders to grow and proposer," Lucas said.

Lucas said that, with the news of the divestiture, he is hoping to double down on the revenue gained through his partnership as Integration Partners expands its market reach to new clients.

The co-founders agreed that they were excited for the growth opportunity with the divestiture and said partners can expect them to ramp up efforts for revenue growth going forward.

"It's going to be a great 2014," Graf said.

PUBLISHED JAN. 3, 2014