Logicalis Offers Customers a Smarter Future With Acquisition of Inca Software

SLOUGH, England, March 17, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

- Logicalis UK Acquires Award-Winning IBM Business Analytics Solutions Provider

Logicalis UK, the international solutions provider, has agreed to acquire Inca Software from Avisen Plc. The acquisition creates one of the first UK system integrators capable of delivering the full suite of next generation business transformation tools; analytics, collaboration, and cloud.

Founded in 2002, Inca is the largest and most successful UK IBM Cognos partner. In 2010, Inca achieved the prestigious IBM Premier Business Partner status and is recognised as the UK IBM Cognos partner of choice. In December 2010, Inca received the IBM EMEA Business Partner Excellence Award, in recognition of its overall success in the market and for the innovative business analytics solutions provided to customers working with IBM.

Business analytics turns the rapid growth in creation and collection of raw data into business information, intelligence and value, enabling private and public sector organisations to dramatically improve how they see themselves, their customers, or their citizens. Business Analytics forms one of four key growth strategy pillars of IBM, which also include Smarter Planet, Growth Markets, and Cloud.

Tom Kelly, Managing Director of Logicalis UK, explains; "The recent media coverage of the UK census is a perfect example of where the massive creation and collection of data, in this case about citizens, is beyond government or private sector organisations' ability to analyse it and create value outcomes from it. The consensus about the census is that the data government needs for future planning already exists but, because it lives in silos, it cannot be easily collated and leveraged in the context of the 2011 census. This results in the country having to spend millions of pounds and millions of hours filling out forms. We believe that the use and growth of business analytics changes this paradigm completely.

"Logicalis' acquisition of Inca Software will open a unique stream of expertise in analytics to customers, and signals our intention to bring differentiated business outcome solutions to market. Our expertise in business collaboration will be combined with Inca's expertise in business analytics to help our customers become smarter organisations. Logicalis will be a smarter partner."

Marcus Hanke, CEO Avisen Plc, comments, "We believe Logicalis, with its unique positioning and services offering, is the only IBM partner that can provide Inca with a platform for its next phase of growth. Over the last six months we've experienced an increased demand for cloud-based services and, following the deal, Inca, with access to Logicalis core offerings, will be able to provide game changing IBM Cognos cloud-based services to its midmarket customers."

"Business analytics and optimisation tools are becoming easier for organisations of any size to use. Combined with the accessibility increasingly afforded by cloud computing, this simplicity means more mid-sized companies want to take advantage of the capabilities business analytics can offer them," says David Cornick, Vice President for Business Partners and Midmarket, IBM North-east Europe, adding; "With Logicalis UK and Inca, both IBM Premier Business Partners, joining forces, their combined expertise will be able to deliver real insight and value to mid-sized companies and UK public sector. Analytics and cloud represent a growing opportunity for IBM and our Business Partners and will be key drivers of our success in the coming years."

In May 2010, Logicalis opened its second UK data centre and has since invested significantly in computing and storage cloud services. These infrastructure and innovation investments will be leveraged to provide a new range of cloud and hosted business analytics services.

Kelly comments further; "The acquisition of Inca strengthens our strategic partnership with IBM as we recognise, like they do, the growing importance our customers place on creating incremental value from their existing data. A retailer wants to know what a customer has bought, but really wants to understand what they could and will buy in the future. A local authority sees value in understanding past citizen requirements, but really wants to understand the services the public will need in six months, two years and 10 years from now.

"Logicalis UK's unique triple play capabilities in analytics, collaboration and cloud computing positions us as one of the few organisations able to execute on the transformation necessities of UK businesses and government. Our offerings of business analytics as a solution and business analytics as a cloud service will be a unique and compelling proposition to our customers."

The acquisition will complete on the 1st April 2011.

About Logicalis

Logicalis is an international provider of integrated information and communications technology (ICT) solutions and services founded on a superior breadth of knowledge and expertise in communications & collaboration; data centre; and professional and managed services.

Logicalis Group employs over 2,000 people worldwide, including highly trained service specialists who design, specify, deploy and manage complex ICT infrastructures to meet the needs of over 5,000 corporate and public sector customers. To achieve this, Logicalis maintains strong partnerships with technology leaders such as Cisco, HP, IBM and Microsoft.

The Logicalis Group has annualised revenues of $1 billion, from operations in the UK, US, Germany, South America and Asia Pacific, and is fast establishing itself as one of the leading IT and Communications solution integrators, specialising in the areas of advanced technologies and services.

The Logicalis Group is a division of Datatec Limited, listed on the Johannesburg and London AIM Stock Exchanges, with revenues in excess of $4 billion.

For more information, visit http://www.uk.logicalis.com.

About Avisen PLC

Avisen Plc is a business and technology consultancy specialising in performance management with a focus on strategy creation, development and implementation. It provides advisory services and software distribution of solutions in the performance improvement management market. Avisen aims to provide specialist technology and advice to enable organisations to build more effective capabilities to manage the performance of their business and allow them to achieve their desired targets. For more information, visit http://www.avisen.com.

    
    For further information please contact:

    Andrew Parker/Jennifer Manning/Charlotte Sandy
    Cohesive Communications
    T: +44-(0)1291-626200
    E: logicalis@cohesive.uk.com