GreenPages Is On The Acquisition Trail

"We are definitely looking at making other acquisitions," said Dupler in an interview with CRN at the company's 17th annual technology summit at the Sheraton Harborside in Portsmouth, N.H. "We see solution providers that understand the need to drive forward into a hybrid cloud world and want to jump on the wagon with us and move forward into the future, like Qoncert this year and LogicsOne last year. We continue to be in active discussions around acquisitions."

[Related: GreenPages' Cloud Management Service Is Gaining Momentum ]

Just last month, Kittery, Maine-based GreenPages, No. 153 on CRN's Solution Provider 500 list, acquired Tampa, Fla.- based Cisco partner Qoncert. The deal combines GreenPages LogicsOne, Cisco's 2013 SMB Partner of the Year (Americas East), with the Cisco 2012 Southeast Commercial Partner of the Year. In March 2012, GreenPages acquired LogicsOne, an Atlanta-based managed services provider that added advanced virtualization and cloud consulting and management talent.

The Qoncert deal brings the combined GreenPages -LogicsOne's unified communications and collaboration technical team to more than 90. That additional technical talent is key as GreenPages mounts its CMaaS sales offensive, said Dupler.

"The skill sets within our technology team continue to change," said Dupler. "The technical team is scaling. We are in hiring mode."

GreenPages' decision to look closely at additional strategic acquisitions comes as it is establishing its LogicsOne consulting organization as a separate brand to make the GreenPages CMaaS platform available to other solution providers, ISVs and OEMs through a "powered by LogicsOne" model.

Dupler said the dramatic pace of change in the IT market has many traditional solution providers looking at making a deal to compete in the hybrid cloud era. "This has never been an easy industry," said Dupler. "It is not for the faint of heart. Solution providers understand the world is changing and they need to migrate their business models. Sometimes they lack the financial resources and talent to make that migration. But they get what is going on. Those are the type of solution providers that are good candidates for us to be speaking with either to partner with or acquire."

Dupler called GreenPages' acquisition offensive a "smart scale" strategy. "We don't buy to get big," he said. "We buy to add capabilities or to establish new marquee customer relationships. This is not a roll-up. We make moves when it fits in for the strategic building of our business."

Dupler has made the GreenPages CMaaS product, which was brought to market in January, the centerpiece of an ambitious five-year plan to build a $300 million business. He forecasts CMaaS will grow at an astronomical 857 percent rate over the next five years. That is expected to drive GreenPages' annuity-based services from $7 million today to $60 million in 2018.

"We have been very forward leaning with cloud," said Dupler. "We have made the investments. We have got the hybrid cloud enablement skills. We have solutions that the market needs right now and' when we look around at the demographics of the VAR community' you have got two types of companies: companies that don't have the size , scale and resources to really make those investments and make the shift (to hybrid cloud) and some larger companies that either didn't believe it or didn't see it and now have customers that need help. We have a solution that can add a lot of value for them and their clients."

PUBLISHED AUG. 6, 2013