Broadband services provider Telephone and Data Systems has acquired OneNeck IT Services in an effort to expand into hosted application management services—particularly enterprise resource planning.
The acquired company will become a subsidiary of TDS Hosted & Managed Services (TDS HMS), part of TDS Telecommunications. TDS HMS provides co-location, cloud computing and disaster recovery, and also consists of VISI and TEAM Technologies, other recent TDS acquisitions.
OneNeck’s specialty is enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications, which was the driving force behind the purchase, said William Megan, president of TDS Hosted & Managed Services and executive vice president at TDS Telecommunications.
“Their capabilities with respect to managing and hosting complex IT infrastructure and applications, their track record of service excellence in the space and their strong employee base and leadership team were what made them most attractive to us,” Megan said. “OneNeck’s hosted application management offering, with its ERP specialization, is a largely a new capability for TDS.”
OneNeck, which has 230 employees, also brings 12,000 square feet of data center space located in Tempe and Gilbert, Ariz. The company also has a strategic partnership with Datapipe to access data center space in Somerset, N.J. The OneNeck name will remain in place for the foreseeable future, Megan said, but the company will be quickly integrated into its new home.
“We will be looking for as many ways as possible to leverage the strengths of each organization,” Megan said. “The high quality data centers at VISI and TEAM hold the potential to be great underlying platforms for the application hosting services currently offered by OneNeck. We will also be using the networking and transport skills of TDS Telecom to tie all of the data centers together.”
With the added capability of OneNeck, TDS HMS will be able to continue to address both large enterprises and small and mid-sized businesses, Megan said. OneNeck’s existing customers are especially important in the transition, he added.
“We understand ownership change can be concerning to customers, especially when it involves a trusted IT partner such as OneNeck,” Megan said. “I want to reassure OneNeck customers that the excellent service that they have received in the past will continue and be delivered by the same team, who will remain in place.”
