GMS provides outsourced white-labeled support like help desk and NOC services to MSPs, and the depth and breadth of their services will be a big advance in what Sherweb is able to offer their MSP partners.
Matthew Cassar, Sherweb’s co-CEO
Montreal-based cloud service provider and cloud distributor Sherweb has acquired Toronto-area company Global Mentoring Solutions [GMS], which provides white-labeled MSP support like help desk and NOC services to their MSP partners in the U.S. and Canada. The plan is to ultimately integrate the GMS business fully within Sherweb.
“We think as more SMB companies move to the cloud they will require from their trusted partner, the MSP, the ability to provide these services on the fly as required,” said Matthew Cassar, Sherweb’s co-founder and co-CEO, who with his brother Peter runs the company. ”It’s super important that MSPs have that capability.”
Sherweb’s strategy with its partners revolves around providing assistance in four separate spheres: cloud solutions, cloud expertise, operational effectiveness, and business strategy.
“Those white label services that GMS provides will really help us help our partners,” Cassar stated. “We want to be our MSP partners’ business partners, and this helps us do that.”
GMS was founded by CEO Wayne Goldstein 20 years ago.
“Their core business is white label services for MSPs,” Cassar said. “They allow MSP partners the ability to provide 24/7 cloud support to their own end customers. They have hundreds of channel partners all over North America, who want to focus on high value services, and who don’t have their own 24/7 call centres, or their own NOC or SOC operations.” All of GMS’s 24/7 call centres are now based in North America. Cassar said that the overlap between the two channels is fairly low.
The outsourced NOC and help desk capabilities have been the meat and potatoes of GMS’s business over the years. The SOC capabilities are something that Cassar said is now critically important, and will be developed as part of Sherweb.
“That business is much newer, but security is so important today, and we will build on that,” Cassar said.
Sherweb had offered their MSPs some of these services before, but Cassar emphasized the GMS capabilities will be a quantum leap forward for them.
“We had some of these capabilities, but not to the extent that GMS does,” Cassar said. “Their capabilities and offerings are way larger, so it’s a major upgrade.”
The deal came about as a result of partners asking Sherweb to provide more capabilities in this area.
“We got a lot of feedback from our partners that this was important to them, so we looked at a number of companies who could provide that capability,” Cassar said. “We did have a prior relationship with GMS, and we liked what we saw when we looked more closely at them.”
The plan – eventually – is to integrate GMS into Sherweb.
“They have a significant business with other companies, and we are treading carefully, to make sure none of these operations will be impacted by the acquisition,” Cassar emphasized. “The plan is for them ultimately to be fully integrated into Sherweb.” Both Wayne Goldstein, and his son Danny, who has had a senior role with GMS, will be stepping down from their roles but the rest of the leadership team will be coming to Sherweb.
This is Sherweb’s third acquisition since their new fiscal year began last September, following C2 Enterprise, which provides an all-in-one IT service management [ITSM] solution, and PurelyHR, which provides modular human resources software to SMBs.
“We will be very active in looking for further opportunities to provide our partners with new capabilities,” Cassar said.
