FusionStorm Goes Distance With Marathon International

San Francisco-based FusionStorm is buying Marathon International, a small Sunnyvale-based Sun VAR with a Boston office, FusionStorm CEO John Varel told CRN Wednesday afternoon. The cash deal will close Friday, April 1, he said.

Most of Marathon's 12 employees--which are split about 50-50 between sales and engineering--will remain in the Boston area as FusionStorm's New England presence, giving the MSP a footprint in a new territory, Varel said.

However, Marathon President James Hall will help launch a new FusionStorm office in Mountain View and will be an "integral sales driving force" in the Bay area, Varel said.

FusionStorm this week also hired a new COO, Tim Tonges, to help architect FusionStorm's national expansion. Tonges most recently had been president of Bell Microproducts' North American Distribution Divisions. Before that, he spent 13 years with Pomeroy IT Solutions, a Cincinatti-based VAR, Varel said.

Marathon primarily is a Sun reseller with a small storage practice. Though the VAR peaked with about $90 million in revenue during the height of the dot.com boom, Varel said Marathon made about $10 million in revenue last year.

FusionStorm, which made CRN's Fast Growth 100 list in January by logging more than 261 percent growth between July 1, 2003 and June 30, 2004, also is eyeing other acquisitions as part of its continued growth, Varel said.

"We are currently in NDA [discussions] with a security company in Southern California and another reseller in Ohio," he said.

Marathon is not the first Sun VAR FusionStorm has acquired. In May 2003 the company purchased CAT Technology, another Sun reseller.