Indianapolis-based Bluelock acquired, expects to grow locally

Indianapolis-based IT company Bluelock LLC announced Thursday that it is being acquired by Santa Clara, California-based InterVision Systems.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. 

Bluelock’s 60 full-time local employees will stay in Indianapolis, company officials said.

“We have found the perfect partner for Bluelock,” Bluelock CEO Christopher Clapp told IBJ. “They want to retain all the Bluelock employees and build on what we’re doing. As [InterVision] grows, I expect the Indianapolis presence to grow.”

Clapp said part of the attraction for InterVision is the cost of doing business, including “talent and resources” in central Indiana.

Bluelock, which was founded in 2006 and has almost 100 clients, specializes in disaster recovery as a service, or DRaaS, and infrastructure as a service, or IaaS.

The company, headquartered at 6325 Morenci Trail, is owned by mostly central Indiana investors, Clapp said. Collina Ventures LLC, led by local tech industry vet Mark Hill, is Bluelock’s single largest shareholder, he added.

InterVision, which has 2,500 clients, offers a broad range of IT managed services. The company merged last summer with Chesterfield, Missouri-based Netelligent Corp., broadening its array of IT offerings and establishing a second headquarters in St. Louis. The Bluelock acquisition will boost employment at the company to more than 250.

InterVision was attracted to Bluelock's growth potential in DRaas and IaaS.

“We’ve definitely put this deal together to drive growth," Clapp said. "The strategies and cultures [of the two companies] are very well aligned. InterVision has a much broader product offering to take to clients, so this [acquisition] will give Bluelock exposure to many more potential clients.”

Clapp noted that InterVision’s 40-plus-person sales staff is already starting to market Bluelock’s offerings.

InterVision first approached Bluelock late last year, as it was looking to acquire a company specializing in DRaaS.

“Bluelock is an accomplished provider and one of the most sought after brands in the fast-growing DRaaS space,” InterVision CEO Aaron Stone said in a written statement. “This acquisition positions InterVision to better address the changing needs of our clients.”

DRaaS is a category of cloud computing used for protecting an application or data from a natural or human disaster or service disruption.

“This acquisition supports our mission to transform organizations and improve business outcomes and will accelerate the growth of the entire InterVision portfolio,” Bob Hollander, InterVision senior vice president of marketing and business development, said in a statement.

Clapp declined to divulge Bluelock’s revenue, but said the company first became profitable in 2010 and has remained so ever since. In 2011, the firm reported sales of $19 million.

“We weren’t looking to be acquired, and I admit to being a bit skeptical early on,” Clapp said. “As I looked into it, it looked like a compelling union of the two organizations. We’re both better together than apart.”

In recent years, Clapp said Bluelock's revenue has been growing “very consistently” at an annual double-digit percentage clip.

In 2011, Bluelock was offered a state incentive deal worth up to $1.4 million in tax credits if it added 118 high-wage jobs by the end of 2014. The company, which had 27 employees at the time, failed to deliver on the lofty hiring numbers and collected just $275,000 in tax breaks from the deal.

“There’s no doubt our aspirations (for hiring) were higher in 2010 … but we get more efficient all the time,” Clapp said. “Our revenue per head is much higher now.”