Netrix Has Sights Set On Cloud Services With Its Latest Acquisition

‘Our last two acquisitions were focused on the MSP business. We feel we’ve gotten the strength and depth we need for our go-to-market moves. Now we want to focus on cloud services,’ says Netrix CEO Rob Dang.

IT managed and professional services provider Netrix is making a play for the cloud development and cloud services market with its acquisition of PSC Group.

For Netrix, which has acquired 13 MSPs and other solution providers in the past nine years, its acquisition of PSC Group is its first in the cloud space, said Rob Dang, CEO of the Chicago-based company.

“Our last two acquisitions were focused on the MSP business,” Dang told CRN. “We feel we’ve gotten the strength and depth we need for our go-to-market moves. Now we want to focus on cloud services.”

[Related: Selling An MSP Business? Here’s Everything You Should Know]

Schaumburg, Ill.-based PSC Group is focused on cloud development and cloud-native applications, Dang said. The company also has practices around process automation and business intelligence, as well as creating the modern workplace with a focus on Microsoft 365, Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services, he said.

“And it’s based in our own backyard in Chicagoland,” he said.

Dang declined to discuss the value of the acquisition. Funding for the acquisition came from a combination of incremental debt and cash on hand, he said.

With the acquisition, Netrix will be gaining an 80 personnel, of whom about 85 percent are technical people, Dang said. Netrix plans on keeping on the entire team, including the back-office people who he said are important as Netrix continues to grow.

Netrix, No. 188 on CRN’s 2021 Solution Provider 500 list, is also getting PSC’s three shareholders, Dang said.

“Our intention and our hope is that they continue their careers with us,” he said. “They are very talented people. We want them to be part of the leadership of our growing organization.”

Netrix has a history of keeping nearly all the former owners of the companies it acquires as part of its leadership team, although that was not the case in the last two acquisitions, which were carve-outs from larger companies, Dang said.

“It’s hard to find entrepreneurial leaders,” he said. “We are fortunate to have so many of them stay with us.”

Netrix in July closed the acquisition of the managed IT services business division of Contegix, which helped expand its services scale and gave it a presence in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions of the U.S. That followed the acquisition in late December of the IT services business unit of Los Angeles-based Prosum, which gave Netrix its West Coast presence.

Looking forward, Dang said Netrix will continue acquiring other solution providers.

“We are especially looking in the security and collaboration spaces,” he said. “We’re keeping our eyes open. If we see an opportunity, we’ll go for it. This will lead to future growth for us.”