Technology and digital empowerment company Curve Group has announced the acquisition of Silverlining Technology, a Microsoft Partner that provides small and medium businesses with a wide range of IT services.
“Curve Group has been looking at acquiring South African technology companies to drive growth by strengthening or expanding our service offering, providing increased opportunities for cross-selling, and giving us access to leading experts in the local tech industry,” says Fred Baumhardt, CEO of Curve Group.
“By linking these entrepreneurial smaller tech players into a wider brand, we can deliver a more SMME and mid-market focused technology offering that competes with much larger players and delivers quality, but at a much lower cost. This strategy follows our business model of acquiring businesses that have elite level talent formed by ex-members of the tier 1 and 2 vendor landscape, and wrapping them with world class project talent, and dropping the price to near commodity level. Silverlining is a perfect candidate in that context as its people are all elite level IT professionals that largely come from the major vendors themselves.”
Silverlining Technology works with SMEs across industries, and provides consulting, auditing, architecting, development and implementation of IT infrastructure built on Microsoft’s platforms. It also provides managed IT and data backup services. The company will be incorporated as a consulting team under Curve Technology, the IT and managed services division of Curve Group.
The acquisition will further leverage the considerable industry expertise and scarce skills that the Silverlining Technology leadership team bring. Between them, founding partner Amelis Uitenweerde and consultant Pieter le Roux have more than 30 years combined experience in IT consultancy. This is especially valuable in South Africa, where the demand for scarce IT skills continues to exceed supply.
The Silverlining leadership team of Uitenweerde and le Roux will take up new roles as Solutions Director and Senior Consultant respectively, while all Silverlining Technology staff will be retained and will form part of the Silverlining consulting team within Curve Technology.
“We see ourselves as a cloud-enabled business; our speciality is in helping companies transition into the cloud, using technologies such as Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform, Enterprise Mobility suite, and Office 365 productivity suite,” says Uitenweerde, while adding that the company still sees a sizable amount of on-premise work.
Curve Group will assign additional salespeople to follow up on Silverlining Technology’s current pipeline of prospective clients, while becoming part of a larger technology group gives the Silverlining team the opportunity to target enterprise clients who would have previously been reluctant to work with a smaller IT service provider.
“The goal going forward is to build Curve Technology into a leading Microsoft practice in South Africa, and to offer Curve Group’s services, including application development and hybrid backup, to existing Silverlining Technology clients,” adds Baumhardt.
While there is an overlap between some of the services provided by Curve Technology, especially in the area of managed services, the acquisition provides Curve Group with the opportunity to pick from the best offerings from both companies and create better products and services for customers.
Baumhardt points out that the acquisition will also bring Curve Group a different type of customer given the difference in how the two companies earn revenue: whereas Curve Technology focuses heavily on delivering managed services over long-term contracts, the strength of the Silverlining Technology team lies in once-off IT consultancy.
“The acquisition will enable Curve Technology to expand in the bespoke consulting market, and to turn some of Silverlining Technology’s current offerings into products that bring in recurring revenue. There are significant synergies to be realised from the combination of the two businesses,” concludes Baumhardt.