Italian enterprise business software vendor Solgenia International has expanded into North American with the acquisition of a Canadian value-added reseller, Microset Systems Inc.
Solgenia International, co-founded by chairman and CEO Ermanno Bonifazi in 1994, began with a focus on enterprise resource planning solutions based on Microsoft‘s Windows platform. Over time, the company grew its solutions to include business intelligence (BI) and customer relationship management, Bonifazi said.
After experiencing growth in Italy and throughout Europe with help from its network of channel partners, Bonifazi began to focus his attention to expanding into North America.
The company’s solutions enable customers in the 50 to 500-seat range to have enterprise-class software that is able to interconnect with rich collaboration solutions such as Web conferencing in a cloud-based environment, he said.
Bob Binns, the CEO of Solgenia Americas, joined the company in January and is based in the company’s Americas headquarters in Scarborough, Ont. Prior to this, Binns was the CEO at Toronto-based Caro Systems, a software consulting and development company.
After completing the acquisition of Microset Systems in February, whose office and entire staff have been retained in Scarborough, Binns said the company has been busy with integration and education efforts. As Solgenia is a privately-held company, financial information surrounding the acquisition wasn’t disclosed.
With the close of the acquisition, the goal now is to expose its partners to the company’s new portfolio of products in the enterprise software and unified communications (UC) spaces, he added.
“The acquisition of Microset Systems is exciting news for the channel because they now have an improved and increased portfolio (of solutions) to sell,” Binns said. “Partners aren’t looking for solutions that are in the two points of margin range. They want profit opportunities. We offer partners a significant revenue opportunity.”
With a selling strategy of roughly half direct and half indirect sales, Binns said the plan is to increase channel revenue to 80 per cent. Currently, the company has more than 550 partners worldwide, with 500 coming from North America. Of those partners, about 85 are from Canada.
“We see an opportunity for partners whose offerings may overlap with what we have,” Bonifazi said. “For example, a partner may offer BI on top of their existing platforms, therefore adding further value.”
The company has at least one distribution partner right now that will help deliver the company’s solutions, but it declined to name who it is. Both executives said the company is on the lookout for more “new” partners, but Binns said the search will likely be industry and geographic-specific.
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