Platform MSP Play: General Informatics Expands Via Two New MSP Buys

‘1 Ping Security’s founder and operator, Aaron Lancaster, and I have known each other for about 15 years, and even worked together in the past. Aaron is very focused on security consulting, penetration testing, and assessments. He will take over our security services and consulting and will become our new senior security engineer and vCISO,’ says General Informatics President and CEO Don Monistere.

Managed service provider General Informatics this week unveiled the acquisition of a managed security service provider and the MSP business of another solution provider, and said it may close on one or more acquisitions by year-end.

General Informatics is a Baton Rouge, La.-based platform MSP, which is an MSP that is acquired by a private equity company with the express goal of acquiring other MSPs in order to build a larger organization.

General Informatics was acquired in November 2020 by Rosewood Private Investments, a Dallas-based private equity firm which has since continued to support the MSP in its acquisitions, said Don Monistere, president and CEO of the MSP.

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“We are a platform MSP,” Monistere told CRN. “We were a 40-person organization when acquired. Now we’re over 200 employees.”

That investment is doing more than fueling acquisitions, Monistere said.

“By next year, we’ll be not just a managed service provider, but a managed security service provider as we will have our own staffed SOC [Security Operations Center],” he said. “Having your own SOC is a big difference for an MSSP.”

General Informatics closed the acquisition of 1 Ping Security, a Raleigh, N.C.-based MSSP, Monistere said.

“1 Ping Security’s Founder and Operator Aaron Lancaster and I have known each other for about 15 years, and even worked together in the past,” he said. “Aaron is very focused on security consulting, penetration testing, and assessments. He will take over our security services and consulting and will become our new senior security engineer and vCISO.”

Lancaster is well-known in the security industry, and is an in-demand public speaker, Monistere said. And because 1 Ping Security consists of only Lancaster and a couple of consultants, integration of the MSSP into General Informatics will be easy, he said.

“The acquisition is really a move to get a really talented security professional into our business,” he said. “I wanted both him and to get his business.”

The second acquisition is the managed services business of Vazata, a McKinney, Texas-based company that also has a data center services business.

“Vazata was operating as a single company, but decided to focus on the data center services business by selling its MSP side, and we were interested,” Monistere said. “We’ve been talking for about four months about how the carve-out will look. But it’s worth the time.”

As a result of the deal, Vazata also gets a new client for its data services business, Monistere said.

“We will lease data center space from Vazata, giving us a third data center base outside the ones we already had in Baton Rouge and Birmingham (Ala.),” he said.

With the Vazata deal, General Informatics also gets its first two offices in the Dallas area, Monistere said.

“We had two engineers working there, and now will have two offices,” he said.

Looking forward, General Informatics hopes to close one more acquisition by year-end, and another early next year, Monistere said. He also expects integration off all the acquisitions into his company’s PSA and RMA tools will be done by March, he said.

The acquisitions of 1 Ping Security and the MSP business of Vazata follow General Informatics acquisition in January of CMS IP Technology and Unicom. Prior to that, General Informatics in November, 2021 acquired Versiant. In May, it also acquired Emco Technologies.