General Informatics Acquires Fellow Louisiana MSP For Cybersecurity, Maritime Growth

‘We have access to quite a bit of private cloud services, because we have two data centers in Dallas and one data center in Baton Rouge, with the ability to do DR for both private and public clouds. That’s not something GlobeNet did a lot of. They had some private cloud, but there’s going to be a lot more opportunity for their potential and current customers to do more business with us in both public and private clouds. We also bring AI to the table, something they haven’t really gotten to because they’re so focused on security,’ says General Informatics CEO and President Don Monistere.

General Informatics, a managed IT and cybersecurity services provider, said it has acquired fellow GlobeNet.

With the acquisition, Baton Rouge, La.-based General Informatics gets a strong cybersecurity services team along with the ability to significantly enhance its Louisiana business, said CEO and President Don Monistere (pictured above).

The value of the acquisition, which was the seventh acquisition for General Informatics since early 2021, was not disclosed.

New Orleans-based GlobeNet is a full-service technology provider, Monistere told CRN.

“They specialize in delivering advanced cybersecurity solutions, and for us, this is about enhancing our cybersecurity practice,” he said. “They have nine ten employees, with 8 of them on the engineering side, so we’ll be drastically increasing the number of security-focused engineers on our team. This really works well with our cybersecurity threat response team as well as our security services team.”

Monistere said he and GlobeNet CEO and founder Kevin Gray have been working on this deal for nearly two years, but that time was spent less on negotiating and more on learning each other’s business.

“We started working together pretty closely where they would use us for certain services in Baton Rouge, and we had engaged them on a couple of opportunities in New Orleans. So we had the opportunity to work together before we even started getting real serious about closing.”

GlobeNet significantly expands General Informatics’ healthcare and maritime vertical capabilities, Monistere said.

“Kevin has developed quite a few relationships with the various ports and terminals in New Orleans,” he said. “He’s also been focused on healthcare, which, again, is right down the center of the plate for us. So it made a lot of sense for GI and GlobeNet to come together because there were so many areas where we had overlap.”

While there is an overlap in services, the acquisition brings scale to General Informatics, Monistere said.

“Our security services groups are growing quite rapidly, and in this type of situation, sometimes scale allows one plus one to equal three,” he said. “We’re able to handle more clients based on those two organizations coming together and creating efficiencies of scale. So it was, as much as anything, a scale opportunity to add talent to the to the current pool that we have, and vice versa. They are a 10-person company with some high-level security guy. We have a number in our security department. You pull all of those guys together, and now suddenly you’ve got quite an offering around cybersecurity services They provide CISO (chief information security officer) services as do we. Working together, it brings a lot more expertise to the table. GlobeNet has also done a really good job of vetting various cybersecurity tool manufacturers and vendors, and pooling those resources will be super helpful in building a much more standardized and efficient service.”

GlobeNet’s entire team will become part of General Informatics’ security team, and Gray will become executive vice president of security services reporting directly to GI’s chief information security officer. That team will also support GI’s managed services.

“All 10 of the employees are staying on board with us,” Monistere said. “This is as much a growth story as it is anything else. We met last week, and everybody asked me who we’re cutting. But that’s not what this is about. This is about growing and continuing to kind of ride this wave of security services. Look, at the end of the day, any MSP that doesn’t have a security division is probably falling behind, and so we want to continue to bolster what we’re doing in that area of our business.”

GlobeNet also brings General Informatics a couple of new vendor relationships, including Cynet and others, Monistere said.

“They’re excited about this transaction as well, because they feel like there’ll be opportunity within their customer base,” he said.

The acquisition means opportunities for cross-selling General Informatics’ services to GlobalMeet clients, Monistere said.

“We have access to quite a bit of private cloud services, because we have two data centers in Dallas and one data center in Baton Rouge, with the ability to do DR for both private and public clouds,” he said. “That’s not something GlobeNet did a lot of. They had some private cloud, but there’s going to be a lot more opportunity for their potential and current customers to do more business with us in both public and private clouds. We also bring AI to the table, something they haven’t really gotten to because they’re so focused on security.”

General Informatics has developed an AI-as-a-service platform which offers customers a ChatGPT-like experience but which is completely secure, Monistere said.

“Any information that you upload is in is stored in a vector database that isn’t shared with any public AI offering,” he said. “We also provide consulting around Copilot and can provide licensing around Copilot for Microsoft applications. We also offer both internal and external chat bots that are trained specifically with a particular use case in mind.”

General Informatics is owned by Rosewood Private Investments, a Dallas-based private equity company. Monistere and his team worked on the GlobeNet acquisition through the due diligence phase, during which Rosewood helped, he said.

“Rosewood was involved in going through diligence and verifying that the business is what we think it is,” he said. “And of course, they’re involved heavily in the close so they’re pretty excited about this as well.”

GlobeNet was a profitable company, Monistere said.

“The owner had reached a point where he wanted to pursue larger accounts but felt limited by the fact that he was operating as a single owner-operator,” he explained. “Especially in the increasingly complex field of security, customers expect their MSP to offer a wide range of services like those we provide at General Informatics. We not only have a strong regional presence but also national reach. He was starting to expand into Texas, where we already have a significant footprint in Dallas, Waco, Houston, Beaumont, and Lufkin—something he saw as a tremendous opportunity. Additionally, he was wearing many hats: engineering, sales, and administrative tasks. He wanted a partner to help shoulder those responsibilities, which is a key reason why he chose to go this route.”

GlobeNet is General Informatics’ eighth acquisition.

The company in early 2023 said it acquired Eministration, an Opelika, Ala.-based IT management and consulting firm.

General Informatics in December 2022 unveiled the acquisitions of 1 Ping Security, a Raleigh, N.C.-based MSSP, and Vazata, a McKinney, Texas-based company that also has a data center services business.

Prior to that, General Informatics in January, 2022 acquired CMS IP Technology and Unicom. General Informatics in November 2021 acquired Versiant, and in May 2021 acquired Emco Technologies.