Blue Mantis Expands Canadian Business, ServiceNow Capabilities With Coreio Acquisition

‘We’re very excited with the team that we’re able to work with now in Coreio. It’s very much aligned with our core values as a business and how we’re very much a client-first, cyber-first organization,’ says Blue Mantis CEO Josh Dinneen.

IT service provider Blue Mantis this week expanded its go-to-market reach into Canada with the acquisition of fellow services provider Coreio.

Blue Mantis, which until mid-2023 was known as GreenPages, also gained an expansion of its ServiceNow business with Toronto-based Coreio, said Josh Dinneen, CEO of Portsmouth, N.H.-based Blue Mantis, which ranked No. 136 on CRN’s 2025 Solution Provider 500.

Dinneen, whose prior company Norwell Technology Group was acquired by GreenPages in 2018, told CRN that Coreio brings a reach into the Canadian market that Blue Mantis did not have despite having a presence in Toronto that delivered services to the U.S.

“There’s a lot of synergies on how they deliver to their customers with everything from desktop to the data center, networking, and SOC [Security Operations Center] services that make it a very easy integration,” he said. “In that context, their philosophical approach to solving those IT challenges with managed services is very much aligned with us, and certainly them being a ServiceNow shop provides some great synergies as well.”

Dinneen said to expect Blue Mantis to make more acquisitions but not until it is done digesting the six solution providers it has acquired in the last 12 months.

“We’ve been aggressive in that, and now we’re going to get organic growth on the backside of that inorganic growth,” he said. “We’ve made those investments, and now the goal for us is to really mature those investments over the next 18 months. So you’re going to see a bit of a pause from us on the acquisition front as we’re driving these integrations and really maximizing the return on these investments.”

Here’s more of CRN’s conversation Dinneen.

Define Blue Mantis.

We’re a security-first IT services firm. Our go-to-market is North America, and we deliver great services to our many customers.

Blue Mantis is acquiring Coreio. Tell us about Coreio.

Coreio is a Canada-based firm [based] in Toronto. We made some acquisitions about three years ago in Toronto specifically to give us capabilities around automated infrastructure, hyperscalers and modern data centers. It’s been a great investment of ours. But they delivered all their services here in the United States. With Toronto being the fourth-largest city in North America, we had aspirations of going to market there and in Canada since we were already incorporated there and had all the mechanics set up there. We had a lot of good engineering talent up there. We just didn’t have a go-to-market or sales presence up there. Like I said, our route to market for our Canadian business was the U.S. and via a near-shore capability.

So we thought it made sense to invest in a firm, specifically Coreio, which is a traditional managed service provider. Much like we do, they did managed services and managed infrastructure, but they also had some very exciting capabilities around ServiceNow. We are very tightly aligned with ServiceNow, not only from a delivery motion where we use them as an internal platform but also delivering value to our customers around the ServiceNow ecosystem. We have been building those capabilities out as our customer demands were coming in, and then the customer demands started outpacing our ability to build that internally. So from a speed-to-market perspective, we thought it’d be great to make an investment that mapped to our overall strategy, not only entering the Canadian market effectively where they’re also a focused on midmarket customers, but from a demand services side. There’s a lot of synergies on how they deliver to their customers with everything from desktop to the data center, networking and SOC [Security Operations Center] services that make it a very easy integration. In that context, their philosophical approach to solving those IT challenges with managed services is very much aligned with us, and certainly them being a ServiceNow shop provides some great synergies as well.

How important is ServiceNow for Blue Mantis?

We see the tremendous customer opportunity in the customer demand. It’s a big addressable market. When you look at ServiceNow as a whole, they’re really leaning into the midmarket and the commercial markets. Traditionally, they play in the enterprise space most effectively. That’s where their largest concentration of customers is. So as they continue to lean downmarket to where we are, it’s a great opportunity for us to capture the excitement that they’re bringing to the market but also be able to deliver value back to our customers. We’re seeing a lot of demand from our customer base, but also the alignment with ServiceNow’s overall strategy is obviously complementary to what we’re trying to accomplish.

Is ServiceNow your primary vendor?

We work with vendors like Microsoft. Our internal app stack today is Microsoft, ServiceNow, Salesforce and NetSuite. Those are our core applications. We use ServiceNow for ITSM [IT service management], ITOM [IT operations management], SAM [software asset management], HAM [hardware asset management] and as a PSA [professional services automation]. We’re using that as a delivery mechanism for our customers today, not only in our professional service business, but in our managed service business. We’re doing a lot of managing the environments of our customers who already have ServiceNow or are leveraging our tenant to have those services delivered to them. So it’s a sales opportunity. It’s an opportunity for services around implementing and managing ServiceNow and our core product sets, which are around managed infrastructure. It plays well into all those facets.

How did you get to know Coreio?

I know Rob [Muroff, CEO of Coreio] probably north of two years now. I was introduced to him by a mutual friend, and he was entertaining the thought of going to market. He didn’t really know what that looked like and wanted to talk to some folks, and I was one of those folks. So we’ve been talking a little over two years, and as our conversations matured, it was right for both of us. The investment made sense.

What is Muroff’s role at Blue Mantis going forward?

Rob’s going to be the GM of our Canadian operations. We had a leader running that business, but he left as was planned. That team has been integrated into our [organization] structure. Again, the delivery motion was here in the United States. So it was an extension of our managed services team and professional services team. What this acquisition does is give us the size and scale of all their customers [in] Canada. We needed someone to really head that business while combining the organizations to have a more robust near-shore capability. We already had a near-shore capability, and this really complements our global delivery center at large, which includes our onshore teams, our near-shore teams, and our offshore teams in India. We have a big presence in Bangalore, India. We’re delivering enterprise-class services to the midmarket today.

I have to ask: How much did Blue Mantis pay for Coreio?

I appreciate the ask, but I’ll have to pass on that one

Fair enough. How many people are coming over with Coreio?

Same thing. We’re a private company. We don’t really disclose that stuff.

Was Coreio a profitable organization?

Oh, yes for sure. It’s very accretive financially and otherwise. It was a great opportunity for both of us.

Does Blue Mantis have any private equity behind it?

We do. Our primary sponsor is [New York-based] Recognize. We recapped the business back in December 2020 under Abry Partners. So we did about three and a half years with Abry and were able to recap the business in August of last year and gave them a favorable return. We were able to bring in a new sponsor and drive a more aggressive growth strategy. Abry did reinvest in our firm as a minority sponsor, and they do have a non-managing board seat, but Recognize is our primary sponsor. Both PE firms have been tremendous to work with, and we’re lucky to have such strong financial partners.

Was Recognize involved in the acquisition of Coreio?

We started these conversations prior to the recap, so they were aware of it. And as our current PE firm for the last year, they were very much aware and involved as we closed on that opportunity.

How many acquisitions has Blue Mantis made over the years?

Coreio will be the sixth acquisition since the Recognize recap in September 2024.

Do you see more acquisitions going forward? Are acquisitions a big part of your growth strategy?

So our growth strategy since I got here was primarily organic. The acquisitions we made prior to last year were really for capabilities. They were accretive, but they were really more around our ability to deliver domain expertise to our clients. And as we shifted last year to more of an inorganic growth strategy in the early cycles of the investment from Recognize, our goal was to make some good acquisitions that gave us geographical expansion. Obviously, enhanced capabilities are great, too. Coreio hits all the buckets: It’s a geo expansion, it’s a capability expansion, it’s aligned with our overall mission to increase our recurring revenue. That’s a big part of what we’re trying to accomplish here while also delivering scale to our customers. That’s really the underpinning of the strategy. We’ve been aggressive in that, and now we’re going to get organic growth on the backside of that inorganic growth. We’ve made those investments, and now the goal for us is to really mature those investments over the next 18 months. So you’re going to see a bit of a pause from us on the acquisition front as we’re driving these integrations and really maximizing the return on these investments.

Anything else you think we should know about Blue Mantis?

In all the acquisitions we’ve made, we have not lost any teammates, and we haven’t lost any customers. That’s really important for us. That really starts with cultural alignment. We’re very excited with the team that we’re able to work with now in Coreio. It’s very much aligned with our core values as a business and how we we’re very much a client-first, cyber-first organization. Teaming in collaboration among the employee base is very important. Those alignments are key to the success of any type of acquisition, and it’s certainly been a big focus of ours as we continue to scale and deliver value to the market.