Dimension Data Fills A Void With e2y Buy

Dimension Data said it acquired London-based solution provider e2y for an undisclosed sum to fill a hole in its digital commerce portfolio with an award-winning consultancy, the company told CRN.

’They’re a company that’s grown vastly in the last couple years, but I think they also felt it was time for them to play in a bigger market with a larger brother attached to it in the form of Dimension Data,’ said Scott Gibson, group executive for digital business solutions at Dimension Data.

Laurent Christen, CEO of e2y, agreed, telling CRN that there are many ways the two companies can help each other grow.

’By joining Dimension Data, we can, provide a full end-to-end solution to our clients,’ Christen said. ’Getting into the Dimension Data family, it's all about doing the same thing. Being extremely focused on commerce and marketplaces, but just scale it to different level and different regions, and also appealing to global clients with an end to end solution.’

Gibson said in looking at their market – where clients are transforming some or all of their business to a digital platform – one area where Dimension needed help was in helping clients make the move to digital commerce.

’For us, I felt that having a competency in our business that was very focused around digital commerce was something we really didn’t have enough of,’ he told CRN. ’We didn’t have enough expertise around consulting to our clients, around this move into the digital commerce space and transact with customers on various digital platforms that are out there. And also that deep skill of actually implementing digital commerce solutions that many of our clients are looking for.’

When they were hunting for a company that filled this need, Dimension Data – No. 9 on the 2018 CRN Solution Provider 500 -- wanted a business that worked with SAP hardware, so Gibson asked SAP for help.

’I couldn’t go buy Deloitte, or Accenture, right?’ he said, laughing. ’I said introduce me to a partner who you feel is very innovative and who you feel is a company that I could acquire and sort of use as my sort of kernel to growth into other regions, a company that you think has some great IP and a good understanding of what you’re trying to do.’

e2y – which has a strong presence in the UK and Europe -- works in platform adoption and integration, and uses technology to enhance the user experience around digital commerce, to generates growth for its clients. Gibson said this adds a complementary set of skills to Dimension Data’s core business of systems integration, managed services and digital infrastructure consulting.

Dimension Data -- a Johannesburg-based solution provider -- employs 28,000 people in 47 countries around the world, in consulting, technical support, and fully managed IT services.