Distributor Nuvias Group, which already has brands Wick Hill and Zycko, has bought a controlling share in Siphon Networks, headquartered in the UK. SIPHON, formed in 2009, has specialised in providing services, including design, support and consultancy to the channel in unified communications (UC) and associated technologies. Now a £20m business, it has offices in the UK and Benelux, and works with vendors including Polycom, Oracle and Broadsoft.
SIPHON will continue to operate from the same location, with the same staff and the same management team, led by Steve Harris, who will remain as managing director. Paul Eccleston, CEO Nuvias Group, said: “SIPHON's focus on high level service and solutions capabilities for the channel is perfectly aligned with the Nuvias Group philosophy and strategy. SIPHON is also highly complementary to the cyber security, advanced networking and UC capabilities of Wick Hill and Zycko, the existing businesses in the Group.”
The brand and company name stays the same: “We will protect what has already been built by SIPHON,” added Eccleston. “We will enhance it through the other capabilities in the Nuvias Group, and we will expand it, taking it across EMEA.”
With around fifty people, the business has specialised in providing services and support to reseller channels looking to cover some of the advanced comms issues such as SIP, hosted and cloud UC and Microsoft Lync / Skype for Business, offering the services as a “white box” for branding by channels. In 2012 SIPHON acquired distributor VCOMM extending the product portfolio to include a full range of Customer Premise Equipment (CPE). Half the staff are engineers, and their numbers will be expanded to cover the growth of the business as it expands, both in the UK home market, and EMEA, using the existing Zycko and Wick Hill distribution businesses for cross-selling.
Steve Harris, SIPHON MD tells IT Europa: “Business is very good and we can see a lot more potential. The backing of Nuvias means we can expand into the opportunities in EMEA.”
Nuvias Group is promising “significant investment” under plans being made currently, says Paul Eccleson.