Solar-powered acquistion fuels growth ambitions
Wavenet, the Solihull based provider of managed telecommunications services to business, has acquired Solar Communications, in a strong bid to secure and develop its position in the market for fully converged data, voice, cloud security and mobile services.
Earier this week, Wavenet revealed a £75m facility had been put in place to fund its growth plans. The value of this deal has not been disclosed.
Solar was founded in 1988 and currently employs 100 staff across offices in Chippenham, Cardiff, Harlow and Manchester.
Both businesses have been pursuing buy-and-build strategies, each acquiring four businesses and integrating them over the past two years.
Bill Dawson, chief executive of Wavenet, said: “Solar is an extremely capable and exciting business with a very talented team.
“Its combination with Wavenet will provide added depth to the innovative and business enhancing services provided to both sets of customers.”
The combined business will benefit from a broader geographic reach, a stronger management team and significant enhancements to the portfolio of services and solutions the group can now offer its customers.
Solar chief executive John Whitty, who will join Wavenet’s executive board, added: “Following an intensive 30 months of growing our business into a successful and agile organisation, the time is right to take the next step and allow our customers to benefit from our significant joint capability and experience in the United Communications (UC) market.
“We are all very pleased that the Wavenet values an culture are extremely close to those already present in Wavenet.”
Wavenet, which was founded in 2000, is now part of Cisco’s Cloud Managed Certified programme as a certified partner, and it supplies over 5000 SME customers with their business communications facilities. It employs 100 staff and has offices in Solihull, Warrington and Norfolk.
