Private Equity Firm Acquires SAP IT Consulting Firm Rizing LLC -

Mike Maiolo, CEO, Rizing Inc — Rizing CEO Mike Maiolo

One Equity Partners, a middle market private equity firm, has acquired Rizing LLC, an SAP-focused provider of IT systems integration and implementation services, the companies have confirmed. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Rizing, founded in 2003, has two core brands and associated focus areas:

Vesta Partners, an Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) professional services firm.
/N SPRO, a firm that encompasses /N SPRO HCM and /N SPRO Retail.

Rizing supports such SAP platforms as S/4 HANA, SuccessFactors, Ariba, Hybris, Fieldglass and Concur. The company has 14 offices across the United States, Europe, Middle East and Asia.

Carlo Padovano, managing director of One Equity Partners (OEP), praised the deal in a prepared statement:

“We are excited about the SAP ecosystem and its strong growth trends. Rizing has positioned itself as a strategic partner to SAP in its core segments and is a trusted partner of many leading companies to support their technology initiatives. The expansion of SAP S/4 HANA and its integration with strategically acquired cloud offerings such as SuccessFactors, Ariba, Hybris, Fieldglass and Concur, deliver significant value to customers, and SAP’s ‘systems of innovation’ tools allow customers to leverage next generation technology in big data, analytics, IoT, and machine learning. Rizing is a key partner to its customers in SAP implementations.”

Padovano also praised Rizing CEO Mike Maiolo and the company's management team. For his part, Maiolo hinted that Rizing will focus on IP (intellectual property) development along with potential acquisitions. In a prepared statement he said:

“OEP has an excellent reputation for driving transformative growth in the businesses in which it invests, and the firm shares our vision for expanding Rizing’s service offerings to a greater number of SAP practices and further developing select IP offerings that complement our existing services. OEP is the ideal partner to help us to expand both our geographic and vertical footprint internationally where we have identified compelling organic and inorganic growth opportunities.”

OEP, founded in 2001, spun out of JP Morgan in 2015. The firm has completed more than 150 transactions worldwide.

SAP, Oracle Partner Buyouts Accelerate

Within the hot M&A market, SAP partners look particularly attractive -- perhaps because so many of those partners have consulting services that extend across on-premises and cloud applications. Plus, SAP's core applications business continues to grow rapidly in the cloud, which means partner opportunities remain bountiful. The trend is similar in the Oracle partner ecosystem, where M&A deals are plentiful.

Among the SAP- and Oracle-related partner M&A deals we've been tracking:

NTT Communications Corp. in November 2017 acquired Secure-24 Intermediate Holdings, a U.S.-based managed services provider (MSP) focused on hosted Oracle, SAP and Microsoft solutions.
Capgemini in September 2017 acquired Lyons Consulting Group, a 300-person Salesforce Commerce Cloud, SAP Hybris and Magento partner.
Lightwell, an IT services and solutions provider in Dublin, Ohio, in September 2017 acquired BAAX LLC—a Columbus, Ohio-based consulting firm that specializes in SAP and Oracle data analytics.

For its part, SAP has been evangelizing midmarket partner engagements in recent months. The company is expected to reinforce that messaging during the SAP Sapphire Now 2018 conference in June.