Channel Beat: Thoma Bravo Acquires Continuum, Red River Buys App Dev Firm Natoma Technologies

This week private equity giant Thoma Bravo purchased global IT management platform provider Continuum to boost organic growth and M&A activity in the SMB security space. The Boston-based vendor said it presented its ambitious 2020 growth plan to Thoma Bravo and was encouraged to accelerate it, according to Continuum CEO Michael George.

Thoma Bravo is looking for Continuum to broaden its reach in IT services as part of an effort to redefine the category entirely, George said.

He also mentioned that Continuum is looking to address the security needs of solution providers while reinforcing channel partners and providing support through its help desk and NOC. Continuum is looking to build an end-to-end security offering tailored to small and mid-sized businesses, with offerings such as perimeter and endpoint defense, firewall-level security, and anomaly detection.

Red River has purchased a software integration solution provider to increase its geographic footprint and expand the range of services it can provide to federal customers. The Claremont, N.H.-based company, No. 55 on the 2017 CRN Solution Provider 500, acquired Sacramento, Calif.-based Natoma Technologies to boost its position in the fast-growing software space and gain a foothold in the Western United States, according to CEO Jeff Sessions.

The acquisition officially closed last week, and Sessions says that he expects Natoma’s synergy with OEMs to drive exponential growth for the company. Dell EMC is amping up its networking technology offensive with a strategy to push its X-Series network switch products exclusively through distribution. This is the first time Dell EMC has offered a product line through distribution exclusively.

The program is beginning in North America, EMEA, and Asia-Pacific/Japan, and will be global by the end of the year, according to Jim DeFoe, Dell EMC senior vice president of worldwide distribution. Dell EMC works with Tech Data, Arrow and Ingram, among other distributors.

The arrangement is aimed at helping partners tap into cross-selling opportunities in the Dell Technologies portfolio. Mike Heintzelman, vice president of global vendors at Tech Data, said that fits well with the distributor's own strategies. Heintzelman said the strategy helps "give [distributors] the opportunity to make a splash with a much larger audience of partners than they might be able to themselves.’