Kovarus Acquired by AHEAD

 

Enterprise cloud leader establishes national footprint, with $2.1 billion in gross revenue, including advanced managed service capabilities


CHICAGO – September 22, 2020 — AHEAD, a leading provider of platforms for digital business, today announced plans to acquire technology solution providers RoundTower Technologies and Kovarus. The acquisitions will create scale, national reach and a more holistic services portfolio for AHEAD, resulting in a business with over 1,000 employees and $2.1 billion in gross revenues.


“The addition of RoundTower and Kovarus to the AHEAD team solidifies our position as the premier provider of digital infrastructure and modern applications in the U.S.,” said Daniel Adamany, CEO of AHEAD. “Together, we’ll better meet the end-to-end needs of our enterprise clients, from strategic consulting to complex implementations to managed services for ongoing operations—all while maintaining the deep platform expertise on which we were founded.”


Cincinnati-based RoundTower strengthens AHEAD’s presence in the eastern half of the U.S., particularly in Ohio, New England, Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina. Based in San Ramon, Calif., Kovarus adds presence in Arizona, California, Colorado, Oregon and Washington, and brings high-profile Silicon Valley clients into the AHEAD account base. All three firms offer robust managed services, to be combined into a more differentiated portfolio within AHEAD.


“With similar backgrounds and business models, this partnership has been a long time coming,” said Stephen West, managing partner at RoundTower. “Joining forces with AHEAD and Kovarus will significantly elevate the level of service available to our clients and further separate us from the competition.”


The news comes just weeks after an announcement that private investment management firm Centerbridge Partners, L.P. intends to purchase a majority stake in AHEAD. The relationship is designed to accelerate AHEAD’s market leadership in enterprise cloud infrastructure, deepen its services offerings and facilitate acquisitions like those of RoundTower and Kovarus.


“Culture makes all the difference when it comes to combining companies,” said Peter Castaldi, principal and co-founder of Kovarus. “Our three firms share similar values and purpose, as well as deep commitments to client success. We look forward to bringing a larger portfolio of services to help our customers on their digital transformation journeys.”


AHEAD recently embarked on a phase of strategic expansion, completing four prior growth transactions over the past 15 months—acquiring Link Solutions in July 2019, merging with Data Blue while acquiring Sovereign Systems in late 2019 and acquiring Platform Consulting Group at the beginning of 2020. The Kovarus, RoundTower and Centerbridge transactions are expected to close simultaneously by the end of October 2020.

 

About AHEAD 
AHEAD builds platforms for digital business. By weaving together advances in enterprise cloud infrastructure, intelligent operations, and modern applications, we help enterprises deliver on the promise of digital transformation. Learn more at www.thinkahead.com and follow us on Twitter at @ahead.

 

About Kovarus

Kovarus helps companies modernize and automate IT. We enable businesses to transform IT service delivery to help them accelerate innovation and deliver cost-effective business outcomes. Kovarus has helped some of the greatest companies in the world by leveraging the Kovarus Solutions Portfolio of best-in-class technologies and services to deliver business services faster, at scale and more effectively to provide them a competitive advantage.

Kovarus, a Dell Technologies Titanium Partner, has been awarded one of the Dell EMC contracts to provide Enterprise Technology equipment and services to the State of California, including city, county and education agencies which can take advantage of the powerful new contract vehicle to procure end-to-end solutions for their Enterprise Technology needs. To learn more, please see the press release.

Kovarus, a VMware Premier Partner, has also achieved the VMware Master Services Competency (MSC) in Cloud Management and Automation, Network Virtualization, and Data Center Virtualization, Digital Workspace, VMware Cloud on AWS and Cloud Native. MSCs are VMware partner designations designed to recognize services-capable partners with delivery expertise and experience within a VMware solution area. Kovarus/AHEAD is the only VMware partner to hold all available MSCs.

To learn more about Kovarus, please visit: www.kovarus.com.


About RoundTower Technologies
RoundTower Technologies delivers innovative solutions and services in the areas of data center infrastructure, converged platforms, cloud automation and orchestration, DevOps, data analytics, and cyber security. RoundTower enables its customers to become more agile, efficient, and secure through the use of technology. Learn more at www.roundtower.com. Raymond James and Associates, Inc. served as exclusive financial advisor to RoundTower in this transaction.