Trace3 Officially Acquires Calian US IT Business, Gets Expanded Security Business, Two NOCs, First SOC

Trace3 has closed its acquisition of Calian Group’s U.S. commercial IT business, adding 140 employees, two network operations centers and its first security operations center, as CEO Joe Quaglia targets geographic, capability and client expansion.

IT solution provider Trace3 expanded its geographical reach and capabilities, and picked up a couple network operations centers and a security operations center, with last month’s close of the U.S. commercial IT assets of Canada-based Calian Group.

The deal was first announced in August.

Irvine, Calif.-based Trace3, ranked No. 36 on CRN’s 2026 Solution Provider 500, got 140 talented personnel, including a few key executives, said Trace3 CEO Joe Quaglia.

Those executives include Christopher Farah, former chief revenue officer at Resound Networks and vice president for U.S. sales strategy and operations at Calian, who now serves as Trace3’s vice president of commercial sales, and Christopher Grammer, former chief information officer at Resound Networks and vice president of solution consulting at Calian, who now serves as Trace3’s new senior principal solution architect.

“We’re actually really good at retaining teammates, and obviously there’s always nuances in every acquisition relative to people,” Quaglia told CRN. “There’s many reasons why I’m excited about this acquisition. First and foremost is the culture and the talent lines up really well with Trace3’s culture, with the quality of talent that we aspire to bring and to develop inside Trace3, and they’re coming on board.”

Trace3 CEO: Calian Acquisition Adds Talent And Geographic Reach

In every acquisition, aside from the technology, capabilities, and vendor and client community, the key to success is people, Quaglia said.

“We’re in the people business in this space,” he said. “And if we can stack the deck with the best people, we will over-index on that. It’s really important for us as we go through the early stages of these acquisitions to pay attention to the culture and to the people part of bringing these folks over and getting them acclimated into the bigger Trace3.”

Trace3 Pays $31 Million Upfront For Calian U.S. IT Business

In the deal, Trace3 paid upfront cash of $31 million, and assumed certain net liabilities worth about $12 million.

Ottawa, Ontario-based Calian offers a wide range of solutions to over 500 customers worldwide. The company’s U.S. commercial IT assets, which includes a solid services business in the U.S., particularly in the Texas and Minnesota markets, came to Calian as the result of a 2022 acquisition, Quaglia said. That business grew in 2024 with the $30 million acquisition of Computex, a large Houston-based MSP. Houston is the home of Calian’s U.S. business.

“Calian decided that to focus on other opportunities and assets, and we were fortunate to give them a new home and perhaps a better home, and we’ll continue to make investments in that team,” he said. “And we think there’s significant upside for them by being part of Trace3.”

The Calian Texas and Minnesota locations, which together ranked No. 218 on CRN’s 2026 Solution Provider 500, were also a big part of the reason for the acquisition, Quaglia said.

“In acquisitions, we look for geographical white space expansion,” he said. “We look for capability expansion. We look for client expansion, talent expansion. This one gives us all four of those dimensions. It does give us more geographical expansion in Texas, which is one of the largest total available markets in the U.S. It does give us more expandability into Minnesota. And both Texas and Minnesota fall perfectly into our central go-to-market region.”

Trace3 Adds First SOC, Two 24x7 NOCs

In terms of capabilities, Calian brings a solid managed services business, including the company’s two 24x7x365 NOCs, or network operation centers, Quaglia said.

“They also give us our first security operation center, where they operate a 24x7x365 SOC, which Trace3 did not have,” he said. “That will let us expand on the capabilities and services we can bring to our Trace3 clients. So, from a capability standpoint, this is a plus-plus.”

The Calian team has a strong security focus, which Quaglia said happens to account for about 50 percent of Trace3’s revenue.

“As you think about the go-forward, especially with agentic AI and the autonomous enterprise, security is going to continue to be a front and center opportunity for our enterprise clients in terms of solving for new and emerging threats and vulnerabilities,” he said. “This is especially true with the host of new agents out there that are probably going to cause some serious challenges relative to governance and risk and vulnerabilities and remediation of threats that come in from the outside. And then underneath that is the managed security piece. I think the combination of all that, from a tech stack perspective, lines up really well for our clients and for Trace3.”

From a client standpoint, there is very little overlap between Trace3 and its newly acquired Calian business, Quaglia said.

“So acquiring a whole set of net-new clients and give them the Trace3 value proposition on top of what Calian offered we think is a benefit for our new clients,” he said.

Trace3 CEO: Expect More Acquisitions

Quaglia said to expect more Trace3 acquisitions in the future.

“There are always big plans,” he said. “We have a playbook in terms of opportunities in the market. We’re constantly in touch with the market in terms of new opportunities, and we have a pipeline. We’ll always have a pipeline. We’re looking for very strategic, very intelligent acquisitions where we can add value to the acquired company and its clients. We can leverage the OEM partnerships that we all have, and enter into new geographies and/or take on new capabilities that our clients are looking for that would otherwise take too long and require too much investment to do it ourselves.”