MSP Bravura Networks Acquired By Technology Capital Investors

Bravura Networks, a San Diego, Calif.-based MSP and member of CRN's Next-Gen 250, has been acquired by Technology Capital Investors (TCI), for an undisclosed amount. Bravura joins a list of MSP and cloud companies owned by TCI that includes External IT, OS33, Avazpour Networking Services, D&D Consulting, ETCI and Hostnet.

Under the agreement, Bravura will keep its company brand, associates and executive management, while TCI looks to expand Bravura's offerings to include cloud solutions and more, said Sam Attias, managing partner at TCI.

"The attraction to us was they are vertically focused. We want to continue to see them vertically focused. They built a nice business with some efficient operations providing traditional managed services over the years. What made this marriage happen was Bravura realized that where the industry is going, they needed a full cloud offering out there," Attias said. "Having access to full cloud offering will determine the survival of MSPs and who is left standing at the end of the day. The key is to be able to scale the business. That's where their head was. They're looking five years out into the future."

Bravura started as a traditional VAR in 2002 and migrated to become an MSP by 2006, said Mike Kaiser, CEO of Bravura. With demand for cloud computing solutions increasing, and at an accelerated rate than previous technologies, the need to stay ahead of the market became more imperative, he said.

"How do we invest and build our own solutions for clients and stay competitive as the Googles and Microsofts come up around this? What we realized along the way was it was too much undertaking on our side," Kaiser said. "When TICI came along we saw a solution set they had that would integrate well with what we have today."

Added Michael Hall, president of Bravura, "We're in it for long haul. We need to scale and build expertise in cloud so don't have to redevelop that piece ourselves. We've been growing consistently the last several years. This lets us get to the next level."

TCI's Attias expects significant consolidation in the MSP space over the next five to seven years, with maybe 2,000 to 3,000 companies emerging from a field of about 15,000. By acquiring several companies now, TCI believes it can become a major player in the space.

"MSPs need to transform themselves not into solution providers, but aggregators of the IT needs of small businesses. They have to have ability to deliver, manage any cloud-based solution, any application, and bring it under one umbrella to manage for the business," Attias said. "If they try to create to compete with Google, it's not going to work."

Next: Cloud Is Coming

The need to reach critical scale becomes more important as vendors start to touch end clients directly with cloud solutions, Attias said.

"The IT services industry for the last 30 years or so has been pretty much evolving in the same pattern. "You had [vendors] create solutions at the enterprise level and work with local MSPs and consultants to deliver end solutions to clients. This kind of kept repeating itself over time and it didn't affect profitability or the survival of MSPs," Attias said.

VARs and MSPs could slowly make the transition to new models because the world moved that slow. That's no longer the case, Attias said. "That's what TCI is about. We have a growing, fully hosted portal-based solution that we are focused on," he said.

That's also a business model that customers will soon demand, said Kaiser.

"Cloud is coming down the freeway. Our customers always look to us for what is the next solution coming. People hear a lot about cloud. The client doesn't always know what that means but having that in our solution with our traditional managed services will allow us to grow the business," Kaiser said.