Do telcos still suck at IT acquisitions?

Bad decisions

While Optus' 2005 Alphawest buyout isn't perceived as quite as big a white elephant as Kaz, it's hard to find anyone who will sing its praises. Insiders have told CRN that while initially Alphawest chugged along pleasantly enough, the cracks started to show as Optus attempted to further integrate the IT provider.

There were apparent decisions to integrate Alphawest's enterprise client contact centre with the Optus helpdesk, despite vastly different customer requirements. Former Alphawest salespeople have talked of frustration when Optus data products were added to their targets, and about the pressure they faced from the telco to steer their clients away from existing network providers, even if the customer was happy with their current carrier.

Optus has again been on the acquisition trail. The company acquired award-winning Microsoft partner Ensyst in 2014 for up to $13 million.

Ensyst continues to be run separately to Optus, and retains the leadership of Nick Sone. But if history is anything to go by, change is inevitable. The parent will seek greater and greater synergies between its new purchase and its traditional business.

Telstra and Optus aren't the only telcos to stumble at buying into the cloud services sector. Look at the dismal failure of Amcom's takeover of Perth systems integrator L7 Solutions – the company was acquired in 2011 for $15 million and sold to Cirrus Networks less than five years later for a mere $500,000.

For the larger telcos, could size disparity be part of the problem? How does a successful mid-sized tech company maintain an identity after being engulfed by a 36,000-staff Telstra or 9,000-staff Optus? L7 Solutions was a small part of Amcom, and a minnow after its parent was acquired by Vocus Communications. But even before the Vocus deal, Amcom's IT services revenue was under-performing, down 35 percent in 2015.

Meanwhile, Dimension Data – which few would call a minnow – has struggled to impress its much-larger telco parent in recent times, repeatedly being singled out for poor performance by Japan's NTT.

If size disparity is the issue, what about the string of deals between mid-tier Australian telcos and system integrators? BigAir bought Oriel and Applaud, Inabox acquired Anittel, Nexon snapped up Praxa. The strategy of these deals is clear, providing what BigAir called “significant cross-selling opportunities”. Time will tell whether a meeting of equals offers a better model to merge telco and IT services.

People problems

Back in 2009, Mike Foster outlined the problem of wages when he said Telstra wanted to reduce the Kaz workforce. Top tech talent, such as cloud architects, don't come cheap. They are, as the owner of one award-winning IT provider put it, "reassuringly expensive". But without this talent, an IT services business will quickly unravel in a pile of overdue projects, sub-par delivery and unhappy clients. According to the director of another cloud integrator that sold to a carrier, the top 20 percent of earners might be responsible for 50 percent of the company's IP.

Leadership churn is a perennial concern during any M&A activity. 'The founder' has a particular aura in the tech industry, so what happens when the leader is no longer in charge? Before being sold to carriers, thse IT companies are often successful because they are led by dynamic, driven entrepreneurs. Yet these self-made CEOs will typically chafe within the corporate bureaucracy of a telco. It's rare to see them continue beyond the earn-out period, and the natives may soon get restless if the company culture was tied to their departing chief.

The latest round of takeovers has largely seen telcos keep top management in place. Nick Sone remains at Ensyst within Optus, and the same goes for Nicki Bowers at Kloud (her fellow directors, Jamie Potter and Geoff Rohrsheim, moved on to focus on their other companies, Chamonix and Cevo). Graeme Strange will continue to lead Readify. Some consider this evidence that the buyers have learned from past mistakes.

Typically leaders do eventually exit after a deal – Bridge Point's Rob Siganto left six months after selling, while O2 Networks' founder Craig Joyce left in June, more than two years after the sale. These departures are not, of course, signals of unrest. IT entrepreneurs sell their business as an exit strategy - in that sense, offloading to a carrier is always successful.

Maintaining the successful culture must be one of the trickiest challenges for acquisitive telcos. Kaz had the owner's name above the door. Kloud is known for its strong culture, with its consultants wearing their 'Kloudie' polo shirts with pride. Readify is renowned for employing many of the smartest technologists in the biz and has made multiple appearances in the Best Places to Work list. Is there a risk this culture could get suffocated?

One former senior executive from Kaz said, under condition of anonymity, that it had been death by a thousand cuts. "With Kaz, it was all beautiful – they came in and said, 'We bought you because you are responsive and different and you will continue as Kaz'. But little by little, it started to change. Little by little, you get caught up in the bureaucracy of the Telstra machine."

Carriers will need to learn from past misadventures if their latest acquisitions are to succeed, adds the former Kaz executive. "Readify is a technical company run by the technologists who see themselves as anti-establishment, and guess what – Telstra is the establishment."

For Kazacos, the first sign Kaz was losing its culture under its new owner was when Telstra cancelled the annual family BBQ. "It cost hardly anything – go to the park, cook some sausages, ice creams for the kids," he tells CRN. "One of the first things Telstra did was cancel the BBQ, so you have the kids saying to their parents, 'we hate Telstra'. Even the Christmas parties got cut back. They were valuable parts of the culture."

But perhaps those mistakes are things of the past, not only because the carriers have learned from them, but also because they have evolved as organisations. According to the MD of another integrator who sold to a telco, "There is an element of timing. When Kaz and Alphawest were on the market, that was a proper telco trying to buy an integrator. Fast-forward 10 years, these are technology firms – these telcos have taken many steps down the path and are much closer to integrators and there is a better understanding of our business. It is not all the way there, but it's a lot closer."

The sentiments are echoed by another technology MD. "With Kaz and Alphawest, you would have to say they were painful experiences but you build on that experience. Did they [Telstra] get it right with NSC and Bridge Point and O2? They, by their own admission, would say they didn't get it 100 percent right but they didn't too too badly and those companies are still providing value. They have got better and better at learning the best ways of integrating those companies."