Ranting Canuck

On Friday this week the company I work for Orbex Computer Systems was officially purchased by Compugen. Compugen is one of the largest IT services providers in Canada and is the largest privately owned one. They are one of the few IT service providers in Canada that has is across Canada, ranging from the Maritimes to British Columbia and up to the North West Territories.

Compugen purchased Orbex so that they have a presence is South Western Ontario a region that historically they have not had a strong coverage. South Western Ontario (SWO) is seen as a major growth area in Canada, with both Cisco and Hewlett Package saying there is huge profit potential in this region. They also want Orbex because we are historically very strong in support small medium businesses (SMB) a market segment that Compugen and other large companies have had a hard time penetrating.

I am excited about the move, although it is going to be a major change for me I am going from the twenty person company to an eight hundred person firm. But it does give the ability to go after clients that historically we have not been able to go after and it also does give me some more career paths.

Below is the official news release from Compugen.

 

Toronto, Ont. – February 4, 2008 – Compugen Inc., one of the largest Canadian-owned IT

solution and service providers and PC systems integrators, is pleased to announce that it has

acquired Orbex Computer Systems Inc.

For the past 15 years, Orbex has been a full-service IT solution and services provider and

trusted advisor to customers of all sizes and representing all industry sectors throughout South

Western Ontario (SWO). Orbex activities cover many aspects of IT infrastructure and the

company holds partner certifications with Cisco, Microsoft, Novell and Sage Software as well as

service authorizations from Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Lexmark. Orbex has offices in London,

Guelph and Brantford.

“We have a great group of customers that have been loyal to us for a long time, but as they

continue to grow larger and become even more sophisticated in their use of technology, it was

becoming more and more difficult for us to scale up our operation to provide the solutions and

support they need,” says Dwayne Mott, president, Orbex Computer Systems Inc. “By joining the

Compugen team, we gain access to a much broader set of resources and new levels of

technology and skills we simply didn’t have, so we’ll be able to handle customer projects that

are much bigger and more complex,” says Mott, adding that now, as part of Compugen, the

Orbex team will be better able to support existing customers on a more holistic basis, across all

their infrastructure needs, rather than on a point-solution basis.

One area of growing interest that the Orbex team has been hearing about from its customers is

unified communications solutions based on Cisco technology. In a recent news release,

Compugen announced that it had achieved Gold Certification from Cisco as a result of meeting

stringent requirements around personnel, training, support and customer satisfaction. Existing

Orbex customers will now benefit from access to Compugen’s Cisco-certified professionals and

to additional experience in planning, designing, deploying and operating Cisco networking

solutions, including unified communications.

“Compugen and Orbex have already worked together as partners on a number of customer

engagements over the past few months and we found there is a great fit between our

companies,” says Harry Zarek, CEO and president of Compugen. “We were pleased to see that

the Orbex team shares our philosophy around excellence in customer service and our

commitment to bringing a value-based approach to customers and to how we help them use

technology to solve business problems.”

Mott will continue in a management role, as Branch Manager, heading up Compugen’s

expanded SWO presence and supporting Orbex and Compugen customers in that region.

“Orbex has a well-established footprint and has built strong relationships with organizations

throughout the region,” adds Zarek. “Adding the Orbex team will significantly enhance our

presence in SWO, enabling us to address more opportunities and provide even greater levels of

support to our existing customers in this important southern Ontario marketplace.”

New Compugen Office Locations

Guelph

557 Massey Rd.,

Guelph, ON, N1K 1B3

Phone: (519) 837-0505

Fax: (519) 837-9142

Toll-free: 1-877-846-9142

Brantford

67 Copernicus Blvd.,

Unit 4a, Brantford, ON, N3P 1N4

Phone: (519) 754-0326

Fax: (519) 754-0327

Toll-free: 1-877-846-9142

London

4096 Meadowbrook Dr.,

Unit 128, London, ON, N6L 1G4

Phone: (519) 652-8270

Fax: (519) 652-1953

Toll-free: 1-877-846-9142

Kitchener-Waterloo

Phone: (519) 240-1577

About Compugen

Compugen has been providing practical, real-world IT infrastructure solutions since it was

founded in 1981 by current President and CEO Harry Zarek. Today, Compugen’s

experienced team of IT professionals helps medium-size and large corporations and

government agencies across Canada with enterprise-level solutions that optimize IT costs and

leverage technology for better business results. Compugen offers a complete design-build-runmaintain

lifecycle suite of professional IT services and is a top-level partner in Canada for Cisco,

Citrix, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Lenovo, Microsoft, VMware and other technology leaders. In 2007,

Compugen was chosen by Microsoft as its Worldwide Partner of the Year in the Information

Worker Solutions category for its office desktop deployment activity. Compugen was also

selected as the winner of Microsoft Canada’s 2007 IMPACT Award in the Advanced

Infrastructure category for innovative solutions that help customers optimize business

performance.

Complete information on Compugen and its lifecycle suite of IT services can be found at

www.compugen.com.