"Silent" force in Melbourne channel in boutique buyout

Melbourne IT provider ASTA Solutions is taking aim at $7 million in turnover through its acquisition of "boutique software development company" Friday Media.

The deal, for an undisclosed amount, completed on 1 July. It will see all of Friday Media's workforce transition to ASTA's St Kilda office by August, taking the joint headcount up to around 60 staff.

"Vendor-agnostic" ASTA offers managed IT services, software development and business consulting solutions. Support and hosting is based out of Melbourne. "We do not outsource anything overseas," ASTA managing director Bill Angelidis told CRN.

Friday Media brings design, web and mobile development to the mix.

"This acquisition has become a personal challenge for me that I have found to be extremely rewarding and something I am hoping repeat in the future as we identify acquisition targets in software development or managed IT services," said Angelidis.

"ASTA has always been proud of our three core services, if you will, but acquiring a company like Friday Media allows us to simply offer more in this ever-evolving, creative field of software development."

He called ASTA "a silent, yet effective force in Australian IT".

"I launched ASTA 15 years ago. Since then, we have grown the business to 60-plus employees that offer our small to mid-sized clients an extensive range of IT services.

"Our managed IT services covers everything from onsite and offsite help desk, infrastructure administration and support as well as our own cloud solution.

"Our software development team designs and develops websites and mobile applications, and our business consulting team focuses on IT strategy and IT advice as well as project management that helps our clients meet their business goals and succeed in a competitive market," added Angelidis.

While ASTA deploys hardware and software for clients, he stressed it was vendor-agnostic and vendor-independent.

"We consider ourselves an IT service provider and an advisor to our clients through the business consulting services we offer. We will often purchase hardware and software on behalf of our clients for project-related work but only after we compare various vendor solutions and make our recommendations."