Certus buys Focus to expand IBM offerings

Australia/New Zealand IBM software and services provider Certus has acquired fellow IBM specialists Focus Strategies and Solutions.

Certus CEO Brian Allen said the acquisition is strategic in that Focus, as a business leader in IBM solutions, has a broad corporate and government client base and its capabilities are complementary to the products and services already provided by Certus.

Tom Reich, Focus founder, said the deal made sense from his point of view as a way to add size, geographic coverage and capability to the company.

"It also provides us with the additional company functions and shared services required to effectively compete and deliver solutions in the ANZ market," said Reich.

Allen said customers will see immediate benefit in access to a complete IBM service for business analytics and information management applications and a much wider range of services across Australia and New Zealand.

Certus will continue to make other acquisitions "to accelerate maturity of our value proposition faster than we can achieve through organic growth alone", said Allen.