Totality Buys Pieces of Breakaway

Totality, an application infrastructure management and managed service provider, announced yesterday that it has acquired specific assets of Breakaway Solutions, a Pennsylvania-based full service provider that filed for bankruptcy in September (see Breakaway Solutions Files Chapter 11).

While Totality is also acquiring key technical personnel, the motivation for the transaction was adding new customers. “The purchase was focused on acquiring contracts not technology. Totality’s ManageWare platform is the core of our delivery technology,” Michael Carrier, Totality’s chief technology officer and acting CEO, told ASPnews.

The San Francisco-based Totality will gain 15 customers through the acquisition, including two Fortune Global 500 companies.
The deal will also enhance the company’s presence in the Northeast and expand its Windows NT platform expertise.

Carrier said that the transition process to move Breakaway clients to the Totality ManageWare platform has been underway for the past 30 days. “This is a relatively fast process. The slow part of the transition is bringing clients up to speed on interfacing with Totality’s processes and systems. One of the main reasons the Breakaway transaction made so much sense was the fact that our Manageware platform can quickly add new customers and deliver operating efficiencies right away,” Carrier told ASPnews.

Totality will perform a range of site operations services for its new customers, from 24×7 monitoring to problem resolution and ongoing change management.

“Totality is paying particular attention to their primary needs, including a smooth migration, uninterrupted site operations and superior site reliability,” Carrier said of the transition for news customers.

Additional customers transitioning to Totality as a result of the Breakaway Solutions acquisition include: Lightxchange, HigherMarkets, Analine Technologies, Engage Software’s Onyx platform, Engage Software customers Metro Creative Graphics and La Opinion, First National Financial Services, 4anything.com E-commerce Sites, Interactive Plus One, StarCite, Inc., World Oil and Yantra Corporation.

Totality also manages e-businesses such as Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, American Airlines, The Sharper Image and Hotwire.

The acquisition of specific Breakaway Solutions assets caps a year in which Totality has achieved “momentum and growth,” according to the company. All tolled Totality has added 31 new customers in 2001 and is listed as the fifth largest MSP in the U.S. (behind EDS, IBM Global Services, Hewlett-Packard and USinternetworking), according to a report by market research firm IDC.

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