Applied Tech, Platte River Networks Merge To Meet Increased Customer Demands

‘This was about being able to create more opportunity for our team, create more value for our customers and for the market,’ says Daniel Petersen, president of Applied Tech.

Two top-performing MSPs, Applied Tech and Platte River Networks, have merged to become an MSP powerhouse serving businesses across 23 states.

With combined annual revenue exceeding $34 million and with each having decade of year-over-year double-digit growth, Applied Tech’s leadership team, which now includes Platte River Networks’ executives, will have a broader and deeper reach into the SMB market with the support of key partners and vendors and more than 100 technology engineers, specialists and technicians.

“This was about being able to create more opportunity for our team, create more value for our customers and for the market,” Daniel Petersen, president of Applied Tech, told CRN. “Both of us recognized we could get to the place we are today on our own, but we could do it a lot faster and create a lot more value and create a lot more opportunity with the team coming together.”

[Related: The 10 Biggest Tech M&A Deals Of 2022 (So Far)]

Denver-based Platte River Networks will now be based at Applied Tech’s headquarters in Madison, Wis., and the companies will have a combined total of about 150 employees. Both have been named on CRN’s MSP 500 list for a number of years.

“Part of our goal with this is to be able to bring more solutions and more capabilities to the table,” Petersen said. “You really need to be able to come together and commit resources to an internal security team, a dedicated escalation team and a dedicated project team.”

The merged companies now have about 500 customers with strong footprints in manufacturing, legal, financial and regulated small-business industries, to name a few.

“End users are getting more and more needy,” David DeCamillis, who now serves as vice president of sales and marketing for Applied Tech, told CRN. “The one thing that COVID exposed was the ability to work literally from anywhere anytime. ... The demands of end users have increased.”

Customers are expecting all of their technology to work all the time and never break, he said, so MSPs have to keep up with those expectations. With the merger, the combined company has added more departments to meet more of those customer needs, including a chief security officer.

“We sort of had a person sitting in that seat, but to be honest this person was being pulled in a lot of different directions,” Petersen said. “The role kind of existed, but it wasn’t truly focused until we were able to get through this merger. Now it’s not just a person, it‘s not just the CSO, there is actually a team.”

The merger was a good fit, Petersen said, because both companies’ cultures align and they have a similar set of offerings. The leadership teams also complemented each other. None of the workforce was let go, and if some positions overlapped those individuals were repositioned for a better fit.

“After 15 years of managing the brand Platte River Networks, it does feel bittersweet to see our name go away, but I strongly believe the name Applied Tech better captures the spirit of our newly merged company and I am excited to take this new brand to even higher levels,” DeCamillis said.

And come 2023 Applied Tech is looking at sustainable, yet conservative, growth.

“We’ll continue to grow the business organically and we will continue to grow the business through M&A activities,” Petersen said. “We are absolutely looking for other organizations to bring to Applied Tech, but we want to be very careful about that. It’s got to be good for the team and good for the customers is what it comes down to.”