Marathon adds security depth with William Jarrod Partnership

Consolidation continues in the managed service provider (MSP) market, with Marathon picking up Horsham-based William Jarrod Partnership.

The attraction of the West Sussex acquisition target is the security skills that William Jarrod has built up over the past decade.

Marathon has been enjoying decent growth and has been developing its own MSP proposition, securing Microsoft gold partner and co-sell status and opening its own security operations centre (SOC).

“At Marathon, we have been experiencing sustained organic growth over the past 12 months, and making targeted acquisitions such as this is part of our strategy to augment our business,” said Iain Maclean, CEO of Marathon.

“The team at William Jarrod Partnership are a great fit to become part of our organisation and we are really excited to welcome them on board,” he added.

William Jarrod provides a range of services, from security assessments to email security, and mobile device and password management.

In response, Paul Daniels, managing partner at William Jarrod Partnership, said the move would benefit its staff and customers. “Marathon is a large enough business to offer enhanced services and opportunities, yet still of a size to retain the personal approach that our customers enjoy today,” he said.

The need for greater involvement by MSPs with security has been one of the key themes of the Datto Con event over the past couple of days.

Datto CEO Tim Weller urged those in the managed service community to make sure they were able to provide security for customers and were making the right decisions in terms of suppliers.

“When looking for vendors…security trumps all. It’s not the cheapest price, you are not looking for 100 extra features before security. Security first is going to be the mantra,” he said.

Elsewhere, IT services player Crayon has continued with its strategy of expanding beyond its native Norwegian shores through acquisition.

The firm picked up Sensa at the tail end of last year as it bolstered its activities in the UK, but the focus with the latest move is down under with a move for cloud licensing specialist Rhipe.

“We are incredibly excited to welcome Rhipe to the Crayon family as part of our global expansion strategy,” said Crayon CEO Melissa Mulholland. “Rhipe is a leading distributor of cloud solutions and services in the Asia-Pacific region and through our combined business models we will help more customers and partners solve their business needs with a greater portfolio of solutions.”