PrintIT Reseller - issue 65

01732 759725 40 BUSINESS UPDATE ...continued Sharp Business Systems UK acquires Complete I.T. Sharp Business Systems UK has acquired IT support services company Complete I.T. This strategic acquisition strengthens the company’s position in the IT market by providing a more sophisticated suite of integrated solutions for the workplace and further enhances its status as a digital transformation provider. Complete I.T. has over 25 years’ experience providing a wide range of IT support services and cloud solutions. It was recently awarded ‘Managed Service Provider of the Year’ by CompTIA, and named as one of the world’s most elite managed service providers in Channel Futures MSP Worldwide 501 rankings, proudly ranking second in the UK. A fast growing business, Complete I.T. has 170 people spread over a network of five offices across the South of England in High Wycombe, Swindon, Bristol, London and Peterborough. Complete I.T. will continue to operate as an independent business under its own brand name. Colin Blumenthal, Managing Director, said: “We are keen to expand what we do as a business and this acquisition deepens our technical resources and expertise, and allows us to further enhance our technology offerings and provides us access to exciting new products and technologies which will now benefit an even wider audience of clients.” Stuart Sykes, Managing Director, Sharp Business Systems UK, said: “Complete I.T. will enable us to widen our focus, improve our technical expertise and enhance our customer offering, positioning us as a trusted partner for our customers’ workplace technology needs. We are excited about what we can learn from each other and see this as a great opportunity to grow our businesses together and make Complete I.T. a national business alongside our own.” www.sharp.co.uk As a business we look for partners that are innovative in both their technology and in their approach, and Kyocera has both of these qualities in spades Kyocera has signed a partnership with Softcat, one of the UK’s largest IT VARs Kyocera joins forces with Softcat organisations as they embark on their digital transformation journeys, and this has really driven our decision to partner with Kyocera. As a business we look for partners that are innovative in both their technology and in their approach, and Kyocera has both of these qualities in spades. Its unique ceramic technology and focus on reliability, as well as the time that the team took to understand our business and create a bespoke offering for us, gave us a huge amount of confidence that we had chosen the right partner.” “Softcat has built a very successful MPS offering over the last six years with a different approach to many traditional copier companies and, for us, this makes them a key strategic partner to work with,” Moya Kelleher, Head of IT Channel Sales at Kyocera said. “As such, we are delighted to partner with Softcat to bring our print and document management solutions to its customer base.” She added: “Almost every organisation today is looking for smarter ways of managing their information. The channel plays a critical role here, and resellers are in a prime position to help end-user organisations get a grip on their information management practices. We The partnership, which will enable Softcat to supply its customers with Kyocera’s print and document management solutions is a key step in Kyocera’s growth strategy and is a significant demonstration of its commitment to the IT channel. It will enable Softcat to offer a wider suite of services to its customers and strengthen its hand in an increasingly competitive market. Softcat, which provides customers with workplace, datacentre, networking and security solutions combined with all the services required to design, deliver and support these on-premise or in the cloud, will integrate Kyocera’s print and document solutions into its portfolio, enabling it to deliver fully-managed print services. The two companies will work together to develop bespoke information management solutions that are tailored to suit the needs of their customers, across multiple markets, enabling them to manage their documents more effectively, drive efficiencies and improve their sustainability. Mark Greening, Managed Print Service Sales Lead at Softcat, said: “Print and document management solutions are critically important for are therefore looking forward to working closely with Softcat to help it integrate managed print solutions into its service portfolio and helping its customers become more efficient and manage their information more effectively.” Greening said that Kyocera’s product set will broaden the range of services that it can offer to clients, and that the company’s focus on the public sector was another really important factor in the decision to join forces. “The public sector is an extremely important market for us, and with Kyocera’s heritage in supporting public sector organisations, we have a great opportunity to strengthen our hand in this arena. Kyocera’s strategic approach and its well-thought-out route to market, rather than engaging in a ‘race to the bottom’, also marked it as an ideal partner for us which matched our own ethos in business,” he concluded. www.softcat.com Moya Kelleher Stuart Sykes