BT buys Basilica to boost SME business

BT today confirmed that it has acquired IT solution specialist Basilica Computing for an undisclosed sum in a bid to beef up its portfolio aimed at small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Basilica, which specialises in configuration, design and implementation services across a range of infrastructure areas such as databases, mobility, networking and servers, employs more than 200 people. It boasts a number of accreditations from the likes of Cisco, HP, IBM and Microsoft, all of which will help BT ramp up its efforts to retain the 1.5 million-plus SMEs it serves in the UK by giving them what they want, in addition to attracting new customers.

"Basilica is one of the best companies in the IT solutions field, meeting the needs of businesses. Basilica excels at providing IT solutions - designing, configuring and implementing IT," said Bill Murphy, managing director of BT Business.

"BT's strategy is to free up businesses to do what they do best - running their business. We will take care of their communications and technology needs. This acquisition will help us deliver that proposition to our customers and it will underpin BT's long-term growth in the unified communications sector."

The latest addition to the BT family, which reported 2006 revenues of 76 million, is headquartered in Letchworth Garden City in Hertfordshire.

Maggie Holland

Maggie has been a journalist since 1999, starting her career as an editorial assistant on then-weekly magazine Computing, before working her way up to senior reporter level. In 2006, just weeks before ITPro was launched, Maggie joined Dennis Publishing as a reporter. Having worked her way up to editor of ITPro, she was appointed group editor of CloudPro and ITPro in April 2012. She became the editorial director and took responsibility for ChannelPro, in 2016.

Her areas of particular interest, aside from cloud, include management and C-level issues, the business value of technology, green and environmental issues and careers to name but a few.