Mississauga-based CentriLogic purchases ManageForce to expand in U.S. market

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CentriLogic Inc., a private-equity-backed Mississauga company that helps companies transfer their business applications to the cloud, has purchased a Chicago-based rival to help its expansion into the U.S. market.

The Canadian company spent an undisclosed amount, believed to be in the tens of millions of dollars, for ManageForce, a 15-year-old cloud services, enterprise resource planning and data solutions provider based in the Chicago area.

CentriLogic specializes in helping enterprises, typically with revenues of up to $1-billion, transfer their technology and business processes held in-house, to data centres accessed over the internet that it either owns or accesses through large public cloud providers. It’s a steadily growing industry worth tens of billions of dollars a year, as companies look to gain efficiencies by shifting operations online.

“[Senior] executives are looking to change their business and see how information technology can be part of that,” CentriLogic chief executive Robert Offley said in an interview.

The combined company will have 200 employees, with about 60 per cent of its business in Canada and the balance in the United States, Mr. Offley said.

CentriLogic, which received an unspecified investment in 2018 from U.S. private-capital providers TriSpan Opportunities Fund and Long Point Capital, is believed to have revenue in the tens of millions, with revenue growing by more than 15 per cent annually in recent years. Its customers include Freedom Mobile, Leon’s and Kodak Alaris.

British-born Mr. Offley is a veteran of the data storage business. He previously led the Canadian division of PSINet and sold it to Telus Corp. in 2001. He sold a second company, Fusepoint Managed Services, in 2006, the year he started CentriLogic.

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