New Vology President Eyeing Acquisition Targets, Growth

New Vology President John O'Shea said he is aggressively looking at acquisition targets in Texas, California, Florida and the New York Tri-state area as the fast-growing solution provider looks to surpass $200 million in 2015.

"We like to say that as number 139 on the SP500 list, that we are only 138 companies behind IBM, and gaining," said O'Shea. "We have big plans at Vology."

The Tampa, Fla.-based IT solution provider and Juniper partner finished 2014 ahead of its revenue plan at just below $170 million, while expecting organic growth in 2015 to be three to four times the market growth rate.

[Related: Vology Scoops Up Govplace's California Location]

"We have had a number of companies approach us since the acquisition of Bayshore Technologies at the end of 2012," said O'Shea. "It seems like once the word was out that Vology was looking for companies that could help us grow, there has been a steady stream of interest."

Vology is in talks with about two companies each week regarding acquisitions and has the funding to win potential deals after closing a $40 million senior credit facility in October.

"Since acquiring the West coast operations of Govplace in Irvine, Calif., our focus has turned toward adding geographic reach for our managed and professional services in the Northeast and Texas markets," said O'Shea.

The acquisition of the division of federal government-focused solution provider Govplace last year is part of a three-year growth strategy, aimed at expanding its footprint geographically and within select vertical markets.

Vology plans to focus on acquiring more traditional VARs as well as managed service providers companies with skilled engineering employees.

"We're looking at traditional VARs that are focused on IT infrastructure that have the opportunity to still transform the business and become more service focused compared to product focused," said Vology CEO and Founder Barry Shevlin. "We're also looking at managed service providers with companies that have good engineers that we think we could leverage in there."

With the industry in constant motion right now, Shevlin said, companies need to make significant investments in changing their business or become part of a larger organization.

O'Shea said Vology will be making investments in finding and hiring superior engineers along with more training.

"We are actively hiring solution architects and engineers with backgrounds in data center infrastructure and virtualization. We have hired a full-time recruiter to do nothing but find engineering talent that fits our culture," said O'Shea. "We are looking for virtualization talent, as it is one of our cornerstone practice areas ... we've hired four virtualization-focused engineers in the last 30 days."

The solution provider is currently growing at a rate of 20 percent to 25 percent on a year-over-year basis, according to O'Shea, and now is the time to buy.

"Many sellers are motivated to sell based on plans to retire and ensure continuity for the organizations they've spent 20 years building," said O'Shea. "We're seeing a lot of good opportunities right now."

Vology holds major partnerships and certifications in networking, security and infrastructure, including with Juniper, Brocade, Dell SonicWall and Hewlett-Packard.

NEXT: HP Talks O'Shea Promotion

In addition, the promotion of O'Shea to president is being seen as a way to strengthen core partnerships.

"Under John’s leadership, we expect accelerated growth from Vology across all of the HP Enterprise product and solution categories," said Terry Richardson, vice president of channel sales for HP Enterprise Group. "In 2014, we saw impressive growth, and we have developed a joint business plan to ensure we maximize our mutual revenue and margin opportunity."

O’Shea has more than 18 years of experience in developing and implementing customer-centric strategies in the IT industry and has high expectations for the future.

Shevlin said Vology has consistently been doubling the size of its business every three or four years through a healthy combination of organic growth and acquisitions.

"We certainly expect that trend to continue over the next five to seven years," he said.

PUBLISHED JAN. 16, 2015