Managed services News
Meriplex’s Neil Medwed On Acquistion Strategy: It’s About ‘The Art Of The Possible’
Joseph F. Kovar
‘The driving force behind everything I do is how can I help other people succeed? How can I help other people avoid mistakes? ... Meriplex allows me to positively impact customers and employees, make people very wealthy, and put them on a path going forward to live their life dreams, whatever they may be,’ says Meriplex’s Neil Medwed, vice president of corporate development and M&A.
The MSP dealmaker
Neil Medwed has been a fixture in the IT industry for 45 years, including a 26-plus-year run as the owner of Preferred Technology Solutions, a Dallas-Ft. Worth-based MSP. That changed three years ago when Preferred Technology Solutions was acquired by Meriplex Communications, a Houston-based provider of managed carrier, IT, and cybersecurity services.
Meriplex, which is listed on CRN’s 2023 Managed Service Provider 500, had previously made one other acquisition, but was hungry for more. Medwed, now the vice president of corporate development and M&A at Meriplex, had industry contacts that helped him stand out at his new company where he was put in charge of pursuing more potential acquisitions. And since then, he has brought nine other MSPs into the Meriplex fold.
Meriplex had the backing for its ambitious M&A spree. Clairvest Group, a Toronto-based private equity firm founded in 1987, in 2018 invested in Meriplex. Under Clairvest, Meriplex grew from an annual revenue of $30 million to over $200 million, Medwed told CRN.
[Related: Preparing An MSP For Private Equity: ITPartners+ CEO Lays It Out]
Meriplex last year took on additional investment when London-based Virtruvian Partners acquired a majority stake, with Clairvest retaining a minority stake.
The investments have given Meriplex the ability to grow via M&A, and Medwed gave it the ability to open the doors of MSPs who may not have considered being acquired. And bringing smaller MSPs into a national managed services force is important to reach the kind of clients they might not otherwise reach, he said.
“When you look at our industry, there’s tens of thousands of SMB MSPs,” he said. “For the enterprise, say 10,000 end users and up, there’s a handful of MSPs like IBM Global Services there. But when you look at the mid-market, say 200 to 10,000 end users, until Meriplex there hasn’t been a nationally recognized MSP in the United States. And that’s exactly what Meriplex is building through organic growth as well as through strategic acquisitions.”
Medwed and Meriplex are at the center of an expansion to meet the ever more complex requirements businesses have for managed services. To see how they are doing it and what it might mean for other MSPs, read CRN’s interview with Medwed below.
