Clearwater International advises Welltel on its acquisition of Strencom

Clearwater International has advised Welltel, Ireland’s largest dedicated business communications provider on its acquisition of Strencom, an Irish secure connectivity and cloud specialist.

Dublin and Cork-based Strencom is a leading provider of managed secure connectivity and cloud services, solving business-disrupting network and security problems for customers. Strencom’s customer base includes Europcar, Fujifilm, DPS, Alliance Medical, and Insomnia Coffee, with more clients across retail and financial services. The company’s highly-skilled 30 employees across connectivity, cloud, sales, and operations will bring the total headcount at Welltel to 180. Strencom will continue to trade as a standalone brand in the interim.

This acquisition completes Welltel’s managed secure connectivity and cloud services portfolio and makes it Ireland’s largest business communications company and the leading one-stop communications and managed IT services provider. The enlarged company forecasts revenue of €38m this year.

This is the latest deal in Welltel’s ‘buy-and-build’ strategy, which saw it acquire contact centre specialist Capstone Intelligent Solutions last month, with further acquisitions to follow this year across Ireland, the UK and Europe.

This deal will enhance Welltel’s product suite with the addition of Strencom’s secure data connectivity, cloud infrastructure and managed hosting solutions. Welltel plans to leverage Strencom’s infrastructure to grow its channel relationships, and build on its partnerships with Cisco, Fortinet and Pao Alto. Strencom’s platform is also the only VMware cloud-certified platform in Ireland. Welltel will cross-sell to both customer bases following the acquisition. Its customers can access Strencom’s secure managed connectivity and cloud services such as online backup and storage-as-a-service, and Strencom customers can benefit from the addition of voice solutions with Welltel’s end-to-end communications, telephony, and managed IT services.

Already a leader in unified communications (UC), Welltel’s services will now cover the entire enterprise market. Strencom’s UK-based customers will also increase Welltel’s UC capabilities in the UK market, with two points of presence there.

Clearwater International previously advised Livingbridge on its investment in Welltel in December 2020.