Rhipe makes services and support move

Rhipe, formerly Newlease, says it won't be competing with its reseller partners despite outlaying around AU$25 million to acquire Microsoft solutions provider, nSynergy.

Dominic O'Hanlon, Rhipe chief executive, says the deal will provide Rhipe with services capability which will be used to assist partners who don't want, or don't have the capability, to build out their own services team.

For partners who do already have support and implementation capability, O'Hanlon says Rhipe will look to assist them when they have peak loads and need extra resource. However, he maintains the partner will have the end-user relationship, rather than Rhipe.

nSynergy is a cloud focused consulting company, with a focus on Microsoft Sharepoint, Azure and Office 365. The company has more than 40 staff.

Rhipe has also taken an AU$2.5 million, 12.5% stake in LiveTiles, which was the product arm of nSynergy, and which develops software to create tiled interfaces for Sharepoint and Office 365.

Rhipe will be the exclusive distributor of the product in New Zealand, Australia and South East Asia.

Of the nSynergy deal, O'Hanlon says many of its channel partners don't have the in-house resources for some implementations.

"If customers come to them asking them to build an entire SharePoint portal or incorporate Lync into their current system, they may not have the capability.

In that case, many partners are forced to rapidly build resources, team up with competitors who can provide the service, or dissuade the customer from the implementation, O'Hanlon says.

"We will be able to offer that service for [partners], but they will still manage the end-user relationship.

Rhipe says the deal 'satisfies a strategic desire to build out the solutions offering, including services and helpdesk functions'.

"Importantly, this allows [Rhipe] to work with its key vendor relationships to offer more solutions to expand its licensing programmes focused on cloud technology.

O'Hanlon says the company will be building out its services and support offerings 'more and more' in future.

"Cloud is changing the world. Companies are thinking why build [their own infrastructure] when we can just use hosted services, and why buy software upfront when you can get it as-a-service.

"The next wave is why have a whole bench of people with specialist skills when you can just consume as you need it.

"This will give the service provider community more capability that they can sell.

"If those partners don't have the support and implementation capabilities today for Office 365, this is a brand new opportunity for them.