CDSoft Buys ACT Group for Midrange Expertise

Published: January 5, 2009

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Consolidation is not just happening with IT in America, but in every country and market. Irish IT services company CDSoft has plunked down 1.5 million euros to buy its way into the IBM server maintenance business by acquiring fellow Irish company, ACT Group.

ACT Group has 25 people and revenues in the range of 3 million euros, according to CDSoft. The group had two units before CDSoft bought it. Blue Chip Ireland is, according to the company, the largest independent maintainer of IBM x64 and Power servers, and it actually does it the old-fashioned way by providing on-site maintenance. ACT also ran another unit called Computer Systems Services, which provided support for PCs and networks running Windows and various middleware and applications like Exchange Server.

Prior to the acquisition, CDSoft, which is based in Celbridge, County Kildare, Eire, had 28 people on the payroll and 4 million euros in annual sales. CDSoft is a top Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard, and it is big on unified communications.

The fact that one company that is just a little bit larger than another one could buy it for less than half of a year's revenue is indicative, perhaps, of how tough conditions are out there. But, these being privately held companies, it is hard to say for sure what motivations ACT Group's owners had to do the deal. It will be interesting to see if third-party maintenance takes off, or if the market for any maintenance is about ready to dry up. Given what I know about people, I think the maintenance budgets on aging computers of any type are going to be under serious review this year.

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