Help/Systems Opens European Headquarters

February 19, 2013 Alex Woodie

Fresh off the acquisitions of two UK companies, Help/Systems last week announced that it has opened a new headquarters in London to serve as the base for the company’s growing European operations.

In 2012, Help/Systems acquired two IBM i software companies that were based in the UK, including CCSS, which developed systems management and monitoring tools exclusively for IBM i, and Safestone, which developed security and compliance tools for IBM i and other operating systems. Like Help/Systems, both companies had customers across Europe and around the world.

With the new European headquarters in London, Help/Systems is gearing up for a big European push. “We are very excited to see our customer base grow so rapidly outside the United States,” said Jim Cassens, managing director of Help/Systems International, the UK arm of the Eden Prairie, Minnesota, company. “This will allow us to continue adding staff to support the needs of our customers and strategic partners across Europe.”

Help/Systems has acquired an impressive collection of software over the last few years. In addition to its own ROBOT collection of IBM i utilities, the company also owns and sells security, systems management, and BI tools from PowerTech, SEQUEL Software, and Bytware. And then there is Skybot Software, the new line of systems management utilities for Windows, Linux, and Unix, which is also the new home for the network management software Help/Systems obtained with its December acquisitions of Dartware.

All told, Help/Systems now sells 45 products out of 14 offices around the world. The company also shared that it has 200 employees and 6,300 customers, and had 43,000 active product licenses at the end of 2012, which it says was a record. You can expect those numbers to go up in the future, according to Help/Systems CEO Janet Dryer.

“These investments in new solutions and resources are necessary in order to support our continued growth outside the US, both organically and via acquisition,” Dryer says in a press release. “Our expanding portfolio of IT management solutions across the IBM i, Unix, Linux, and Windows platforms puts us in a strong position to increase our customer base of midsize and large businesses worldwide as we continue to do in the United States.”