Pinnacle Business Systems Buys Minneapolis IT Firm
January 8, 2013 Alex Woodie
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Pinnacle Business Systems, the IBM i software developer and IT service provider based in Edmond, Oklahoma, last week announced the acquisition of St. Croix Solutions, an IT service provider based near Minneapolis, Minnesota. Pinnacle Business Systems (PBS) is renown in the IBM i world for employing the original developers of BRMS, the backup and recovery product that’s part of the IBM i OS. Today, PBS sells three IBM i solutions, including icom/400 for System i, a message monitoring and alerting tool; trac/400 for System i, a backup and recovery and media management tool; and ups/400 for System i, which tracks the status of batteries and uninterruptible power supplies for controlled shut downs of IBM i servers. PBS continues to offer IBM i technologies, although it has broadened its technology scope to include security, virtualization, collaboration, disaster recovery, consulting, and managed services across IBM i and Windows environments. The company has partnerships with IBM, HP, Microsoft, VMware, and EMC. That cross-platform focus will continue to grow with the acquisition of St. Croix Solutions, which focused primarily on the System p/AIX and System x arenas and serves clients in the Minneapolis area. According to its website, St. Croix offers general IT services in the areas of infrastructure management, data growth and storage, business continuity, security and compliance, and virtualization. The company has a similar list of partners as PBS, with the addition of several big names, such as Oracle, Dell, Cisco Systems, Symantec, and several smaller ones. “This acquisition represents the best strategic move for both Pinnacle and St. Croix Solutions,” states Rob Anderson, CEO of Pinnacle Business Systems, in a press release. “At a time that is crucial for economic recovery, we are confident that the combined company will increase our competitive advantage in products, consultative support, and overall value to our customers.” St. Croix Solution’s former owner and CEO, Jennifer VanDerHorst-Larson, stated, “St. Croix has a reputation for strong infrastructure expertise, but the market was dictating that customers needed a end-to-end partner that could also address information security, data assurance, and unified communications.” She will continue to run Vibrant Technologies, a remarketed IT solutions’ company, with her husband, Dave, and focus on raising awareness to the care and treatment of autism through The Holland Center, a school for autistic children. It was the second acquisition for PBS, which focused primarily on the southern and central U.S. before acquiring St. Croix. PBS, which had 70 employees before the most recent acquisition, previously bought the Kalos Group in 2004.
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