InterVision Makes Two Acquisitions To Expand Services, Analytics Capabilities

Fotis Networks and SeyVu had two things in common: Both were longtime partners that helped extend the strategic service provider’s bench, and neither had their own real sales force.

IT strategic service provider InterVision recently made two acquisitions it said will fill out its services and expertise capabilities while giving its large sales force the opportunity to expand the kinds of solutions it brings to customers.

Santa Clara, Calif.-based InterVision last week acquired Fotis Networks, a Boston-based provider of IT professional services to commercial, health-care, education and government customers.

That followed the late September acquisition of SeyVu, a Folsom, Calif.-based provider of machine-learning, artificial intelligence and big data analytics capabilities.

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They were the fifth and sixth acquisitions for InterVision in the past three years. Financial terms of both acquisitions were not disclosed. Previous acquisitions included the September 2018 purchase of Infinity, which specializes in building hyper-scale clouds, and the March 2018 purchase of Bluelock for its managed services capabilities.

Those acquisitions were spurred in part thanks to outside investment InterVision took three or four years ago, said Jamie Lee, chief revenue officer for InterVision, which ranks No. 100 on the CRN 2019 Solution Provider 500 list.

"About three or four years ago, we did a management buyout and took investment from Huron Capital, based in Detroit," he said. "We chose them because their appetite is for growth through acquisition. They said they wanted us to grow by purchasing companies with adjacent operations or who are growing fast."

Fotis Networks and SeyVu had two things in common: Both were longtime partners that helped extend the InterVision bench, and neither had their own real sales force. Lee said.

Fotis Networks has been a service delivery partner that InterVision used as a subcontractor with a strong focus on cloud and security, he said. "We feel this is a growing business for us, so we decided to bring them on board," he said.

When asked why not just continue partnering with Fotis Networks as a subcontractor, Lee said the relationship was strong enough to make the acquisition a better choice. Roughly 60 percent to 70 percent of Fotis Networks' revenue came from InterVision, with 20 percent to 30 percent from its own sales efforts and the rest from the federal government, he said.

"We looked at where the market is, where it is growing, and what the utilization rate we had with them as a partner," he said. "If we were doing two or three projects with them in a year, an acquisition might not be as important. But we don't have enough staff for our projects, and we did a lot of subcontracting to Fotis."

Fotis Networks is a profitable business and is bringing about 40 people to InterVision, Lee said.

"Nearly all of Fotis' people were on the delivery side," he said. "They didn't have any real sales team. Everybody from Fotis is coming on board. Frank [Loulourgas, Fotis founder and CEO] will take an integral role at InterVision running our post-sales organization. And because Fotis is a known entity, and our people have been working together for years, this will be a simple tuck-in for us."

SeyVu, on the other hand, has a strong machine-learning and artificial intelligence background, which are two of the three top concerns of CIOs, Lee said.

SeyVu brought a team of about 10 data scientists and a couple of people on the back end, but no sales team, he said.

InterVision has been partnering with SeyVu for about a year and felt bringing its capabilities in-house would give it a leg up with its 3,000-plus customers, Lee said.

"We know customers are looking for data scientists and machine learning," he said. "And we knew we needed to bring in the right expertise. We've been working with SeyVu in the federal space on public cloud projects and projects like fraud prevention and 'voice of the company.'"

Lee said it is not uncommon to see solution providers in the market with strong skills but no real sales teams.

"We are never opportunity-constrained," he said. "We are resource-constrained. People like what we do and want us to help them extend to the cloud or other technologies. We are very particular about who we bring to the fold. And companies like Fotis and SeyVu want to come into opportunities with the help of a growing sales force."