Richard Humphreys |
Converged information and communications technology services provider GCI has acquired Modality Systems, a Microsoft communications and collaboration practice with operations in the UK, USA, Asia and Australia. The acquisition will enable GCI to expand its business internationally for the first time and capitalise on the growing global market for its Microsoft-based, cloud-enabled intelligent communications services.
As well as geographic scope and reach, the acquisition also enables GCI to broaden and sharpen its services offering. Modality Systems has developed a variety of software technologies which enable enhanced features, deeper management capability and improved ease of use of Microsoft intelligent communications software. This complements GCI’s existing unified communications offerings and will ensure that customers gain a better experience from collaboration tools including Microsoft Teams, and Office 365.
Modality Systems also provides a suite of video conferencing services, with full service video room management, video bridging and web consultation offerings, all integrated into the Microsoft collaboration suite.
According to a GCI press release, the combined business aims to dominate the growing managed service market around Microsoft’s intelligent communications software. “The acquisition of Modality Systems provides GCI and its customers with established scale and support internationally,” said Adrian Thirkill, CEO of GCI. “Geographically, it expands the ability of the combined companies to service larger, global companies and additionally widens key new markets in the USA, Australia and Asia where Modality has already established sales and delivery capability for enterprise customers.”
The Modality business will be run within the GCI group. “Both GCI and Modality have invested heavily in innovating around Microsoft’s collaboration suite and our combined global customers will benefit from a leading managed service company which is at the forefront of digital transformation,” said James Rodd, the current Modality CEO. “We believe there is great potential given that Microsoft Teams alone is set to become the second-biggest workplace collaboration app by 2020, surpassing both Slack and Google Hangouts”.
Mike Constantine, GCI CTO added: “The acquisition of Modality Systems opens up exciting opportunities for us. The scale of engineering expertise we now have across the Microsoft product stack puts us in a fantastic competitive position. Additionally, we are investing in datacentre modernisation services, powered by Microsoft’s Azure public cloud to support customers embracing modern ways of hosting and transforming their applications. We are looking forward to the next step as the two companies work closely together to deliver even more exciting propositions to the market, underpinned by Microsoft technologies.”