Quartet Service Acquires En Vogue Computers To 'Double Down' On Office 365

Toronto-based Quartet Service is betting big on Office 365 with the acquisition of En Vogue Computers, the MSP said Wednesday.

Quartet Service is a $12 million managed service provider with 58 employees that focuses on delivering infrastructure, hosted and voice solutions to midsize clients in the Toronto area. With the acquisition of En Vogue Computers, a Toronto-based MSP with particular expertise in Office 365, Quartet Service President Robert Bracey said he hopes to build Office 365 as a "foundation" of the company going forward.

"Our install base of [Office] 365 customers is not quite going to triple, but we're doubling down on the selling and configuring of Office 365," Bracey said. "We're pretty excited about where this is going."

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The acquisition closed several weeks ago, but was only announced on Wednesday.

Quartet Service and En Vogue Computers aren't strangers to one another. Bracey said he and En Vogue owner Norman Di Pasquale have been friends for years.

"Quartet is the only firm I would ever consider joining," Di Pasquale said in a statement. "I have known and trusted them for years. We are excited to bring our [Office] 365 expertise to them and very excited that we will be bringing greatly increased service levels and breadth of offerings to En Vogue clients."

Di Pasquale has joined Quartet Service as a senior account manager, Bracey said.

Bracey said En Vogue adds a niche base of clients to Quartet Service and "they really know what they're talking about" when it comes to Office 365. The plan, he said, is to bundle that Office 365 expertise into the services packages offered by the MSP, with support, data storage and Exchange. Bracey said the company would be announcing the full package layouts in the coming weeks. The bundles of services have been in beta with a handful of clients for the past two weeks, he said.

"It's part and parcel of our increasing focus of integrating [Office] 365 into our services suite ... We love what we're doing with [Office] 365," Bracey said.

Bracey said Office 365 is a major opportunity to boost client retention and help them work more effectively. He said he sees that as a trend in the industry, with clients looking for MSPs to "simplify" their IT support with guaranteed results.

"This whole industry is moving from efficiency to effectiveness, and we think that's a big deal," Bracey said.

The effectiveness of the bundles is especially important, he said, as standard IT services face commoditization and pricing pressure. In a recent conversation with a client of more than 12 years, Bracey said the client told him over lunch that MSPs like Quartet Service had to "tell me what to do" instead of piecing together his own solution.

In addition to the technology expertise, Bracey said he expects the integration of En Vogue to drive the "speed" and "enthusiasm" around the cloud. While Quartet Service began its own transition to the cloud five or six years ago, Bracey said the acquisition will help jump-start the company's culture to embrace the cloud even more.

"While we've been reasonably successful at it, [En Vogue] has knocked it out of the park. Bringing that enthusiasm and new way of thinking has been very, very useful," Bracey said.

So far, Bracey said the integration of the two companies is going smoothly, with none of what he called "transition grief."

"We're having a lot of fun," he said.

PUBLISHED FEB. 5, 2015