GlassHouse Technologies, the global leader in independent storage services, today announced it has acquired MBI and its sister companies, MBI Turkey and Integrity Systems. The acquisition expands the service offerings and depth of expertise offered by GlassHouse, and extends its geographical reach into the European and Middle Eastern markets.
Founded in 1985, MBI Group is the leading provider of integrated storage and backup/recovery solutions in Israel. MBI has expertise in data protection spanning storage, servers and database environments. MBI Turkey was established in 2004 as a subsidiary of MBI and is an active solutions provider for the largest finance, telecommunications and defense organizations in Turkey and the Middle East. Integrity Systems, the sister company of MBI and also headquartered in Israel, was founded in 1995 and specializes in providing services related to infrastructure software and proactive monitoring of applications, databases and operating systems, as well as backup and recovery software solutions.
MBI and Integrity Systems will be operated as wholly-owned subsidiaries of GlassHouse Technologies. The acquisition brings GlassHouse’s total number of consultants to 430 and expands their infrastructure expertise in servers and database systems.
“GlassHouse’s strategy is to be a global company and broaden our services within IT infrastructure. This was the next logical step after establishing our brand in the U.K. ,” said Mark Shirman, president and CEO, GlassHouse Technologies. “We are now able to offer our unique IT transformation methodology to markets in the Middle East and Europe. Increasingly, our customers are asking us to help optimize their database and server environments, in addition to their storage environment, and the MBI Group acquisition allows us to do that. One of the main reasons for our interest in the MBI Group is their unique IP (intellectual property), which will allow us to offer to our customers new, unique and exciting managed services options for database systems.”
The newly formed GlassHouse Technologies’ International Division will be led by Andy Norman, former Managing Director of GlassHouse’s U.K. operations. Michael Burstein, founder of the MBI Group, will serve as Executive Vice President, International Business Development. Doron Rosenblum will run the MBI and Integrity offices in Israel. Emre Pekar will manage the operations in Turkey. Paul Hammond will assume the role of Managing Director for the U.K.
“This is a tremendous opportunity to bring together the best talent around the world for infrastructure services,” Michael Burstein, founder of the MBI group said. “GlassHouse ties together all the services of MBI, MBI Turkey and Integrity Systems, and creates a complete, end-to-end solution for transforming IT environments to the service provider model. The marriage of our talents and services makes sense, and we now offer expanded vendor-independent expertise from a truly global standpoint.”
About GlassHouse
GlassHouse is the leading provider of independent services that help organizations solve the business problems of enterprise storage. From strategy through implementation, operations and customer support, GlassHouse consultants partner with clients to architect, implement and operate IT environments to drive high performance and agility. GlassHouse clients include Morgan Stanley, State Street Global Advisors, Royal Bank of Scotland, Allianz, AIG, Aetna, Exxon Mobil, Reed Elsevier, TJX, Amgen, Biogen, T-Mobil, Virgin Atlantic, and Walt Disney. More information about GlassHouse is available at www.glasshouse.com.
