Mergers and Acquisitions, VAR

ePlus Acquires Cisco Partner Consolidated IT Services

Apparently, Consolidated Communications is in a buying and selling mood. Consolidated, after acquiring FairPoint Communications for $1.5 billion yesterday, has now sold its Consolidated IT Services business unit. The buyer: ePlus Technology Inc.

Consolidated IT Services, now owned by ePlus, provides data center, unified communications, networking, and security solutions to domestic and international customers including commercial, enterprise, and state, local, and education (SLED) organizations in the upper Midwest. Consolidated IT Services is based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and is a Cisco gold partner.

ePlus, based in Herndon, Virginia, was founded in 1990 and has more than 1,000 associates serving customers nationally and in Europe. ePlus has expertise in Check Point, EMC, HP Enterprise, NetApp, Palo Alto and VMware technologies, notes CEO Mark P. Marron.

This is the latest in a growing list of VAR, MSP and CSP acquisitions over the past 48 hours. We'll post a complete list shortly. More: Track all VAR, MSP and CSP mergers and acquisitions by visiting the ChannelE2E Milestones section daily.

Joe Panettieri

Joe Panettieri is co-founder & editorial director of MSSP Alert and ChannelE2E, the two leading news & analysis sites for managed service providers in the cybersecurity market.