Contact: Scott Denne
GlassHouse Technologies actively used acquisitions to scale up its storage-turned-cloud services business, but now it’s turning to divestitures as it scales back down. The company is selling its US consulting practice to Signature Technology Group in its fourth divestiture since taking its second shot at an IPO.
Founded in 2001 with the vision of building a vendor-agnostic storage consultancy, GlassHouse picked up 13 businesses between 2003 and 2009 for their expertise and for geographic expansion. The dealmaking helped grow the company’s top line, setting it up for a public offering; however, headwinds from the financial crisis prevented it from completing an IPO in 2009. GlassHouse tried once more in 2011 when growth picked up again and it expanded its scope from storage to cloud, but its balance sheet changed for the worse, prompting its auditor to express concern about the company’s ability to stay in business with $4m in cash and $100m debt. Once more, GlassHouse pulled its prospectus.
Since that time, GlassHouse sold subsidiaries in Israel and Turkey and divested two separate units to Signature Technology: first selling its customer support services division in November 2013, and now the US consulting practice. That leaves GlassHouse with a European consulting business, a systems integration unit and a managed services offering.
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