Best Buy said that it has reached an agreement to acquire mindSHIFT Technologies, Inc., the nation's leading managed service provider for small and mid-sized businesses, for $167 million. The transaction will help accelerate Best Buy's growth in the small and mid-sized business IT services category. mindSHIFT provides cloud services, data center services and professional services to more than 5,400 clients and 25,000 managed desktops in key markets throughout the United States.
The combination of mindSHIFT 's capabilities and Best Buy's points of distribution through its retail, Geek Squad services and Best Buy For Business operations is expected to create a competitive advantage that would provide an opportunity for the two companies to capture greater share within the estimated $40 billion small and mid-sized business MSP market. mindSHIFT, the current MSP category leader for small and mid-sized business, has been named the top-ranked business in the MSP space in the United States for the past three years, and the leading MSP in the world in 2009 and 2010 by trade publication MSPmentor.
Through the acquisition, Best Buy will help mindSHIFT expand its capabilities for current and future small and mid-sized business clients in industries such as legal, healthcare, financial, non-profits, associations and education. Like Best Buy's purchase of Geek Squad in 2002, the goal of the acquisition is to support and leverage the proven mindSHIFT business model while giving its management the freedom and resources to grow. mindSHIFT will continue to operate under its current name, management team and capabilities, which currently include 500 employees at offices in Boston; Long Island, N.Y.; Minneapolis; Morrisville, N.C.; New York City; Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.
