Thrive, a fast-growing MSP backed by private equity firm Court Square Capital Partners, has acquired Cisco Gold partner ONI. The deal extends Thrive from the United States into the United Kingdom, and gives Thrive a data center footprint in Europe. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
This is technology M&A deal number 304 that ChannelE2E has covered so far in 2021. See all technology M&A deals for 2021 and 2020 listed here.
ONI’s expertise spans network infrastructure, unified communications and collaboration, contact center solutions, data center services, connectivity, and cybersecurity, Thrive says. The MSP has a Tier 3+ data center in the South East of England, the announcement notes.
ONI CEO Kevin Kivlochan is now CEO of Thrive’s European Operations, reporting to Thrive CEO Rob Stephenson. Also, all ONI employees remain onboard -- working directly for Kivlochan.
In the M&A announcement, Thrive hinted that more international deals could be brewing. Indeed, the statement said: "The ONI acquisition marks initial steps to significantly increase its geographic footprint, both domestically and internationally.
ONI is Thrive’s eleventh acquisition since 2016. Recent deals include Howard Tech Advisors and Apex IT Group, which helped the MSP to scale its Mid-Atlantic region presence in the United States. Thrive's overall business now has 420 employees, Stephenson told ChannelE2E.
Thrive Acquires ONI: Executive Perspectives
In a prepared statement about the ONI deal, Stephenson said:
“ONI is a tremendous IT managed services company with deep Cisco WAN, Unified Communication and Cloud expertise We were attracted to ONI due to their strong management team, led by CEO Kevin Kivlochan, attractive customer base, and desirable geographic location, just north of London. Thrive plans to add our robust Microsoft and cyber security capabilities to assist the ONI clientele, and we’re very excited to utilize their expert WAN engineering team to drive additional value to Thrive’s client base.”
Added Kivlochan:
“ONI has been committed to providing our customers with the availability, performance, and agility required to transform their business. We are ecstatic to join the Thrive family to complement and grow its extensive NextGen portfolio of solutions with our critical and business assured infrastructure objectives, delivering performance, high availability, flexibility, and redundancy. This will enable us to further advance our support to our existing clients in the U.K. with a wider range of service and support offerings.”
Thrive Bets on ServiceNow Opportunities
In addition to geographic expansion, Thrive has been scaling its IT services management (ITSM) expertise. Key areas of investment include the ServiceNow ecosystem. And for good reason: ServiceNow is an increasingly popular ITSM platform for MSPs that want to deliver co-managed services to enterprise and mid-market customers.
