Evolve IP Acquires Mtel to Grow European Presence

**Editor’s Note: Please click here for a recap of the biggest channel-impacting merger and acquisition news from May and June.**

Cloud services provider Evolve IP has acquired Mtel, a cloud communications firm based in the Netherlands, as part of its ongoing growth strategy and to increase its presence in Europe.

Established in 1999, Mtel provides contact center, IP phone systems and business collaboration tools. Evolve IP says Mtel provides an immediate physical presence and additional data centers in Europe, complementing its current capabilities in the United Kingdom, Israel and Australia.

Evolve IP’s Gary Coben

In addition, Mtel brings on-continent technical, support, development, and sales and marketing personnel to back the region’s growth.

Gary Coben, Evolve IP’s senior vice president of channel services, tells Channel Partners U.S.-based businesses with overseas locations now will be “prime targets” for his company’s partners, allowing them to expand their reach, grow their customer base and “ultimately retain that revenue for a very long period of time.”

“In addition, services like global contact center mean that partners will now be enabled to go upmarket into the enterprise space, which still accounts for the largest segment of the worldwide PBX market and one that has traditionally been dominated by premise[s]-based PBX providers like Avaya, Cisco and Mitel,” he said.

As for Mtel’s partners, Coben said the acquisition will lead to even more growth in Europe as his company increases its sales and marketing efforts, and introduces new products and services to the Mtel base “as we’ve done with each of our prior acquisitions.”

“For starters, Mtel customers based in Europe will have immediate access to the United States via our OneCloud platform,” he said. “Without question, European customers with a U.S. presence will be the obvious short-term target for Mtel’s partners. As we begin to build out the remainder of our portfolio in Europe, we will emerge as the only pure-play global cloud communications and cloud computing company worldwide.”

Integrating the two companies’ partner communities and associated programs is secondary to the integration of our “systems, cultures and business processes,” Coben said.

“For now, European partners have access to U.S. products and data centers, and U.S. partners have access to European products and data centers,” he said.

This is Evolve IP’s 11th acquisition in its 10 years of existence. Last fall, it acquired Xtium, which specializes in cloud services for health-care businesses. And in May, it announced it purchased Azzaron, a workspace-as-a-service provider.

“As we see increasing numbers of sales partners seek out and embrace international deals, an acquisition like this presents real avenues for new growth,” noted Andrew Pryfogle, master agent Intelisys’ senior vice president of cloud transformation.

“Evolve IP has a fantastic reputation for operational excellence for both UC activations and cloud computing implementations,” he said. “This Mtel acquisition is an exciting and bold move that will leverage that reputation into big wins in Western Europe. I know our growing sales partner community in the United Kingdom will also welcome this news. Evolve is one of our fastest growing cloud suppliers. We can’t wait to accelerate our growth together across the pond.”