News

Cloud Provider mindSHIFT To Be Acquired by Best Buy

• By Jeffrey Schwartz
• 11/07/2011

Consumer tech retailing giant Best Buy has agreed to buy IT outsourcer and cloud provider mindSHIFT Technologies for $167 million.

While Geek Squad, which Best Buy acquired nearly a decade ago, gave Best Buy an entrée into providing IT services for consumers and small businesses, mindSHIFT lets Best Buy serve small and medium businesses with enterprise-oriented IT requirements. It targets health care, financial services, nonprofits and education, among other verticals.

mindSHIFT offers managed services, hosting and professional services including application development, SharePoint solutions and consulting. The company also recently launched a new portfolio of cloud services called CloudShift, which include a variety of applications such as Exchange, SharePoint and Dynamics CRM services, desktop cloud services, server-hosted offerings based on VMware's vCloud platform and voice over IP services.

"There's no question that acquiring the skills, capabilities and clients of mindSHIFT has the potential to help expand Best Buy's global services capabilities in the vast small and mid-sized business market," said George Sherman, senior vice president of Best Buy Services, in a statement.  "As important, the mindSHIFT team will bring added experience, talent and resources to the remote support capability we have been building within our multi-channel tech service unit Geek Squad."

Best Buy said mindSHIFT has 5,400 customers and 500 employees. Like Geek Squad, mindSHIFT will maintain its own brand and management team, Best Buy said. The acquisition is scheduled to close by year's end.