Much work done five months after MegaPath, Netifice union.
Shortly after Netifice bought fellow secure broadband services provider MegaPath five months ago, the combined company adopted the name MegaPath. While choosing to go with the acquired outfit’s name might confuse some, company officials say the integration of the businesses will leave little room for confusion over MegaPath’s mission.
The company is aiming to provide a one-stop shop for managed IP services for small and large companies. Toward this goal, it has been upgrading its network, syncing up back office systems and sorting out which services to keep, meld or ditch, says Greg Davis, vice president of marketing.
While neither Netifice nor the old MegaPath were household names, the combined company boasts 16,000 business customers across the United States using Internet access, secure VPN, anti-distributed denial of service and intrusion detection/prevention services. Netifice had fewer customers, though mainly large ones. Both companies were privately held, so their financial data is hard to come by, though company officials expect MegaPath to generate about $125 million in annual revenue.
The combined company has been moving the majority of the original MegaPath’s traffic onto Netifice’s network, which was also being upgraded. The old MegaPath leased facilities from Level 3, but the combined company has been migrating traffic onto a new OC-12 network leased from Broadwing (which is now being acquired by Level 3).
The service provider also been consolidating its data centers to cut costs and simplify management. MegaPath came to the marriage with 10 data centers and Netifice had 30. The joined company now has a total of 30, keeping some sites from both providers.
On the services front, the company says it will not support MegaPath’s old IPSec VPN service, as it plans to migrate customers to the NetificeVPN offerings, including an SSL VPN service, Davis says.
Since the buyout, the new MegaPath has been offering legacy MegaPath customers security offerings such as Attack Mitigation, Anti-Malware and Web Filtering. The majority of legacy MegaPath’s customers were small businesses and didn’t have access to these types of security services, Davis says.
Some old MegaPath customers include Jenny Craig, Radio Shack and disability insurance company UnumProvident. Netifice brought with it customers such as Thomson Prometric, The Leather Factory and MortgageIT.
Earlier this month, the combined company scored a big name customer win: Burger King. The fast food giant is using MegaPath’s Secure Network Services.
“We have consolidated systems for all new customers as well as our sales force,” Davis says. The service provider kept some provisioning tools that MegaPath had developed as well as its Great Plains financial package. For the most part, the service provider is using legacy Netifice’s network monitoring and management tools.
“We expect to have the entire integration done by year-end,” Davis says.
