Ignition Bermuda Ltd. has sealed a deal to acquire Fireminds Ltd. to form one of the Island's top IT services and business continuity services groups for the offshore market, The Royal Gazette can exclusively reveal.

The Group will now comprise 83 staff all working under the Ignition brand in its Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Halifax and Atlanta offices, serving the local markets as well as the Bahamas, Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad and Curacao. No redundancies have been made as a result of the takeover.

Ignition's clients in Bermuda and overseas will be able to take advantage of expanded managed hosting options with access to Fireminds' secure virtual hosting environment, which provides production and disaster recovery solutions.

Meanwhile Fireminds customers can benefit from Ignition's 24/7 help desk services, network monitoring and managed IT support and both companies will provide managed hosting from data centres in Bermuda, Canada and the Caribbean, while utilising the software development expertise to expand their SharePoint and Records Management practice.

Graham Pearson, CEO of Ignition, said he had worked together on a number of projects with Michael Branco, president of Fireminds and Ignition's new senior vice-president, and the pair started discussions over the deal three months ago.

He said they looked at both companies and their skill sets and decided there were a number of synergies between the two, with the move making perfect sense as a natural fit for each other.

"Ignition is pleased to be able to serve Fireminds clients with its team of IT consultants based in Bermuda, Canada, Atlanta and Cayman," said Mr. Pearson.

"The acquisition was strategic for Ignition as we are providing more robust and expanded services from our disaster recovery suite's and managed hosting capabilities to offshore clients provided on cloud computing platforms now owned and managed by the group of companies.

"In addition Michael Branco is an excellent addition to the senior management team, as a Bermudian rising star with a great combination of technology and business acumen he will be a key figure in our continued growth."

Mr. Pearson said that there were several key areas which Ignition was looking to expand into, including cloud computing, which Fireminds already offered, while from the latter's perspective, Firemind's clients were seeking greater stability with a wider range of services at their disposal.

He said that Mr. Branco, who he viewed as a key player in running Ignition's Bermuda operations, would add significant depth to the company, and was aiming to bring all of Ignition's capabilities together under one roof by relocating to new offices in downtown Hamilton, where Mr. Branco and his team would be able to utilise its back office, accounting and administration functions.

"We will continue under the Ignition brand - that is what we are promoting, and there are a number of new products and services that we will be accelerating the rollout of because of Michael's involvement," he said.

"Our goal is to become the premium IT offshore company in our chosen market - the trends that we are seeing are that as companies start to spread their wings, we are following those companies.

"For now it is about making sure that we can help the clients that we have and with Michael in place in Bermuda that will help us focus on our group plan as we expand into other areas over the next 12 months."

Mr. Branco, who will oversee 33 staff based in Bermuda, will focus on business development and solutions for Ignition's clients using his commerce knowledge and technology expertise, but will continue to service Fireminds' client base with the same level of personal touch and innovative approach.

"Fireminds first year of operation saw rapid growth and recognised that we needed to expand our capabilities in managed IT in order to support our hosting environment and assistance with 24 x 7 operations to focus on our slate of software development projects," said Mr. Branco.

"The Ignition team was a perfect fit as they are a recognised leader in 24 x 7 managed IT support and excellent customer service throughout the offshore jurisdictions."

He said that Fireminds had reached the point where in order for it to grow it needed to partner with another company or bring in more investment, and therefore was the ideal "marriage" to complement both parties.

Admitting that the deal happened quicker than he expected or had even envisaged when he first set up in business, Mr. Branco, who is set to complete his Executive MBA at the Richard Ivey Business School in Toronto, said it would be "business as usual" for Fireminds' existing clients, with the additional benefit of the company being able to handle bigger and more complex projects.

"For me, Fireminds will continue as Ignition and we will continue to support and honour all of our existing clients' needs and if their contracts with us expire we can move them over to Ignition and provide an enhanced service to them," he said.

"In effect, where Fireminds would have been in two years time it now is as of May 1 because we don't have to build anything extra. It is all there.

"It makes us the only IT company in Bermuda that does fully managed services in-house."