Versent accepts Telstra acqusition offer – Strategy – CRN Australia

Versent will be acquired by Telco, after the telco announced to the ASX that it will buy all of the Melbourne headquartered AWS consultancy for $267 million.
Owned by a mix of its founders, investors and employees, Versent was set up in 2014 by Thor Essman, Eddie Smith and Jamex Coxon.
It has over 500 employees currently throughout Australia, Singapore and the United States.
As part of the acquisition, Telstra is also buying Versent subsidiary Stax which provides self-service cloud management for enterprise and mid-market customers.
Asked if Versent staff would be kept on, and the brands of the acquired entities retained, a Telstra spokesperson said nothing will change in the short term.
"As we work through the completion of the deal, we will also be looking at how we bring the two businesses together in a way that protects and enhances the respective culture and strengths of each company for the benefit of our customers and to accelerate our growth," the Telstra spokesperson said.
Telstra confirmed in early September that it was looking to acquire Versent, following media reports about the rumoured sale.
The price for Versent suggested at the time, as much as $400 million, was substantially higher than the actual $267 million figure Telstra has now put on the table.
Versent will help scale the Telstra Purple tech services business, and to accelerate growth opportunities in Australia and overseas.
“Versent was founded on a belief that the way technology services were delivered needed to fundamentally change," the company's chief executive Paul Miglorini said.
"One principle has governed all our activity, that success for Versent is solely a function of our customers’ success."
"We’ve used this principle to underpin our focus on investing in engineering depth, craft, innovation and a culture that enables the best engineering talent to
thrive," he added.
“Versent is known in the market for providing deep, trusted technical expertise with a commitment to customer outcomes through long-term partnership and alongside Telstra Purple we can achieve greater scale with a consistent growth pipeline, particularly expanding our international presence," Migliorini said.
Telstra Enterprise group executive David Burns said there was strong alignment between Telstra and Versent.
"We see strong synergies between Versent and Telstra Purple in our customer base, our strategic partners, our team cultures and the way we tackle customer problems with technology solutions," Mr Burns said.
"And like Telstra Purple, Versent also has an international presence, particularly in south-east Asia, which provides significant potential to grow sales of international and Australia-out digital transformation services," he added.
The deal is expected to be complete within six weeks, and is subject to conditions such as certain unnamed security holder processes.
Update Oct 11: A Versent spokesperson told CRN Australia that all employees will be retained.
"Confirming all staff are staying and Versent as an entity is moving to Telstra," the spokesperson said.

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