IT services companies Expert Solution Providers, Tenet Management Group and associated firm Optimum Networks have merged to form new services firm Intellium.
ESP owners Greg McKeown (a co-founder of Axon), and Max Divers, managing director of Divers Group, are two of the four Companies Office-listed directors of Intellium, which was incorporated last month. The others listed are retail-focused integrator Cohesive’s founder Dale Daniels, who is also a director of Optimum Networks, and Trevor Fowler, a director of Tenet Management Group and Optimum Networks.
Daniels has taken the helm of Intellium as operations director, after being asked by McKeown and Divers to review ESP’s business.
“It was a bringing together of two businesses of equal parts. They both had distinct value in the market,” says Daniels, adding that the firms bring together strengths in edge security and desktop and server infrastructure.
ESP and Tenet’s website addresses now divert to intellium.co.nz, and the new firm’s Newmarket, Auckland contact address is the same as that registered for Tenet Management Group and Optimum Networks.
Fowler is Intellium's technical director, while McKeown and Divers advise the business as members of its board of governors. Daniels and Fowler have previously worked on projects together, Daniels says.
Security specialist ESP's staff numbers, including some in management, reduced from 10 to three prior to the merger, with some staff not supporting the plan to provide a wider range of services, Daniels says. “I don’t see that you can market a business just in a specific area. Customers want an all encompassing service provider.”
Intellium has nine technical staff based in Auckland with all Tenet staff joining the company, and is actively recruiting for more. “Our focus will be on employing staff with strong technical, business and communication skills,” Daniels says. Intellium’s website says alongside IT services, it has partners and affiliates offering a range of other complementary services. Its products include IBM servers, Lenovo workstations and notebooks, Cisco routers and wireless access points, Microsoft small business server, exchange mail and Office, and CA security products, the website shows. It also plans to release a managed services offering later in the year, following the acquisition of US software that will be developed as an appliance in New Zealand. McKeown and Divers bought ESP last March, and McKeown told Reseller News late last year that the pair had initially planned to take an advisory role.
As recently as last year, Expert Solution Providers was believed to have employed more than 20 staff, however numbers were down to 10 by December. McKeown said he and Divers had taken a more direct role from last October, and the company was looking to add new staff and expand its offerings beyond network security.
ESP was previously owned by John King, who left due to ill health and on recovery is now national sales manager at Express Data.
