GRAND RAPIDS — Third-party data center maintenance provider Service Express Inc. continues its M&A streak with the acquisition of a similarly focused Massachusetts-based company, as the Grand Rapids firm separately establishes a footprint in Dublin, Ireland.
Executives with the private equity-backed Service Express announced today that the company acquired ServIQ, which is based near Boston and specializes in data center support with third-party maintenance, managed services and hardware solutions.
Founded in 2004, ServIQ offers Service Express “great technical ability, great veteran engineering and a lot of the same partners and customers as Service Express,” Jake Blough, Service Express’ chief technology officer, told MiBiz.
“It’s a nice expansion into different product lines, and lots of opportunities within our customers to share those technologies. It’s really a win-win all around,” Blough added.
ServIQ had been a vendor for Service Express for at least the past five years, and “we had known (ServIQ) owner (Jeff Reale) from a previous business for over a decade,” Blough said.
A provider of data center support for some of the world’s largest brands and Fortune 500 companies, ServIQ had been growing “really rapidly” in recent years, leading Reale to approach Service Express about a sale and scaling up the business.
“This is a major step for ServIQ and we’re honored to have the support of Service Express as we transition into the next phase of our business,” Reale said in a statement. “We look forward to bringing new offerings to the table with the help of Service Express’ global presence and wide range of data center solutions. ServIQ anticipates a seamless transition, and we look forward to what’s on the horizon.”
Terms of the deal were undisclosed. Reale and his management team will join Service Express. New York-based investment banking firm Agile Equity served as the financial advisor to ServIQ.
Since 2019, Service Express has been a portfolio company of New York-based private equity firm Harvest Partners LP.
The ServIQ deal is Service Express’s first acquisition of 2023, and follows four deals in 2022 and a string of international acquisitions in 2021, as MiBiz previously reported.
Blough said Service Express is experiencing “steady growth every year,” both organically and through “opportunistic and disciplined” M&A.
He added that the firm’s 2023 M&A pipeline is “healthy,” both domestically and internationally, though interest rates have caused M&A activity to slow at the private and public equity levels, as previous forecasts indicated.
Meanwhile, Service Express also announced last week that it has established an engineering footprint in Dublin, Ireland, further expanding its presence in Europe. Company officials noted an intent to continue growing European operations in the next few years.
“We’re delighted to extend our services into Ireland,” Service Express President and CEO Ron Alvesteffer said in a statement last week. “Our world-class IT infrastructure solutions can now be delivered directly to Irish businesses across all industries, and we look forward to deepening our relationship with our current customers and partners in Ireland.”
