Two Philly-Area MSPs Merge To Bolster Customer Support, Cloud Technologies

Two Philadelphia-area members of CRN’s Managed Service Provider 500 have merged to strengthen their technical support and cloud and infrastructure capabilities.

Kennett Square, Pa.-based Pegasus Technologies and Plymouth Meeting, Pa.-based Alura Business Solutions have joined forces, creating a 33-person Mid-Atlantic regional powerhouse.

’We’ll have coverage from Dover, Delaware, all the way up to the Lehigh Valley [in Pennsylvania],’ Matthew Tucker, Pegasus Technologies CEO, told CRN.

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The combined company will be called Alura-Pegasus, with Tucker serving as CEO in charge of strategic vision and Alura President and CEO Jason Derstine tasked with managing vendor relationships as president of the combined company. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, and no job reductions are planned.

"This is a move for growth, not consolidation," Tucker said.

Pegasus will roll out to Alura's clients its Match-IT program, which assigns a dedicated IT team to managed service customers based on personality assessments of the end user as well as Alura-Pegasus' workforce, Tucker said. By not assigning technicians at random, Tucker said, Pegasus has been able to maintain strong personal relationships with its customers even as the company has grown.

"It's very important to have the small feel when you're a larger company," Tucker said. "You're working with the same people that understand your vision and needs."

In addition to technical consultants, Tucker said, Pegasus customers are also assigned a dedicated technical account manager to spearhead chief information officer-level discussions around technology expansion and purchasing decisions.

"These technicians know this type of technology," Tucker said.

While Pegasus has focused primarily on back-end infrastructure from a management standpoint, Tucker said, the merger will make it possible to leverage Alura’s back-end technology for layering managed services. Thanks to Alura, Pegasus' customers will for the first time have access to virtual desktop infrastructure, cloud hosting and cloud application technology.

Tucker said he expects the combined company to utilize Pegasus' operational capabilities around tracking and product operations, while both companies have a sound backup and recovery service offering. Pegasus also plans to scale out its dispatch center -- which Tucker said is staffed by people with a technical background -- to centralize scheduling and customer communication for existing Alura clients.

The top verticals for Alura-Pegasus are financial services, health care, manufacturing, education and legal, according to Tucker.

Derstine has over the past decade grown Alura from a single part-time employee to 12 full-time employees and more than $2 million in annual sales. As part of the combined company, Derstine will be responsible for internal sales training as well as identifying qualified new technologies and building marketing and pricing structures around them.