Bell Integration Acquires Portal Partnership

It is our pleasure to announce that Bell Microsystems Limited, trading as Bell Integration, yesterday acquired 100% of the share capital of The Portal Partnership Limited.

Bell and Portal share the belief that combining both businesses will create a more powerful force in the IT Services market, with a resultant organisation highly focussed upon its core markets and possessing a potent mixture of skills and capabilities to offer our customers. Both companies enjoy an impressive corporate client base and strong relationships, and substantial cross-sell potential exists between Portal and Bell.

The acquisition leads us to a new and exciting partnership where we can build additional relationships, leverage complementary services, and utilise greater purchasing power across both businesses.

Founded in 1996, Bell Integration is a fast growing IT services and consulting company with annual revenues of close to £170m; it’s at the forefront of helping companies drive costs from their operations and improve their ability to engage with customers – either by supporting the growth of their channels to market, or by aiding their responsive and service quality. Currently with over 200 permanent employees and over 50 associates employed in locations in London, Portsmouth, Scotland, Singapore and many based directly at customer sites.

Founded in 2006, Portal is an award-winning technical service and analytics business that supports some of the world’s best-known brands. Portal’s consulting and managed services business focuses on delivering robust Collaboration, Analytics and Integration solutions across a range of industries in the UK. With its 24×7 support centres in the UK and India, Portal can offer a follow the sun technology support service to suit every level and budget.

Portal Analytics solutions enable organisations to remove the barriers typically associated with siloed data. Portal’s rich visual analytics solution allows previously hidden connections within raw data to be unearthed; delivering actionable insights and aids the decision making process in near-real-time.

Bell and Portal have agreed a structure and framework to ensure that Portal retains the benefits of operating as a stand-alone business, whilst also drawing upon Bell’s scale of operations, purchasing power and overheads. Bell’s substantial expertise across a range of services and solutions around datacentre optimisation, workload migration, IT Lifecycle Management and cloud services, will be made available to Portal customers. Bell’s customers will be introduced to Portal’s expertise around IBM products and services, support and consultancy services. A key part of our plan is ensure that Portal’s customers and employees remain untroubled by the change of ownership and that the business retains the ability to deliver effective high-quality services and solutions throughout.

Jon Bradshaw will continue as Managing Director of Portal and will lead the Portal Executive Team, additionally Jon will join Bell Integration’s Executive team. Nick Petheram, CEO and Manpreet Gill, FD will be appointed as Directors of Portal.

This is an exciting step for both businesses, with little or no customer or service portfolio overlaps. It is our shared belief that the acquisition will spur new growth and create opportunities for employee personal and career development.

To reassure you, there are no planned changes to service levels, current teams, places of work or terms and conditions with our customers and partners.

Naturally, you will have many questions following today’s announcement. We have endeavoured to anticipate these as far as possible, and to this end, an FAQ document will be available for Bell employees by clicking here (Bell bNet) and for Portal employees, click here (Portal teamconnect). Of course, any further questions can be raised with your line managers or any of the Directors.

Over the next few weeks, Bell Executives and other senior representatives will be at Portal’s offices to meet with Portal employees. Vice versa, representatives from Portal will be attending Bell’s offices to meet the teams and begin putting our operational plans in place.

We’d like to take the opportunity to thank you for your continued loyalty and support and look forward to meeting you all.

For our Customers:

Whether you are a Bell or Portal customer, you will see no immediate change to the way our business is transacted. We are committed to continuing to work hard to support your business and want to thank you for your continuing loyalty and support. We are confident that this acquisition will expand our ability to support your business and offer you a greater range of services from one trusted supplier/partner. We look forward to the opportunity to share with you our broader offerings in the near future.

If you have any questions, please direct them to your Account Manager, or I would be very pleased to discuss with you how this deal can benefit you as a valued customer.

Thank you for your continued support and I look forward to working with you in this new and exciting venture.

For our Partners & Suppliers:

Whether you are a Bell or Portal partner or supplier, you will see no immediate change to the way our business is transacted.

If you have any questions, please direct them to your existing primary point of contact, or I would be very pleased to discuss with you how this deal can benefit you.

Nick Petheram, CEO, Bell Integration
Jon Bradshaw, Managing Director, Portal