Ed Vos, in his usual jovial manner, told CDN earlier this year to keep an eye on the Toronto-based solution provider. He promised bigger and better things were coming from Onx Enterprise Solutions.
Vos was at the time hiding the fact that the company he runs was about the seal a deal to acquire one of the top aboriginal resellers in Canada, FoxWise Technologies Inc. That transaction was completed in March.
But what really cemented his spot in the Top 25 was a deal he pulled off this summer.
In one of the more surprising developments in the channel, Vos orchestrated a significant deal with the solution provider arm of Agilysys Inc., a Cleveland, Ohio-based software developer for the hospitality and retail industries.
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Agilysys’ solution provider division was called Technology Solutions Group or TSG, and by joining forces Onx suddenly broke out of its Canadian shell to become one of the world’s foremost independent, multi-vendor enterprise data centre solution providers.
This deal will vault Onx up the CDN Top 100 Solution Provider rankings. Currently Onx sits at the No. 7 position, but now with combined revenues surpassing the $700 to $750 million range it will certainly challenge Softchoice for top spot.
Vos showed a knack for wheeling and dealing in 2011. For example, he entered into a deal with Marlin Equity Partners, an LA-based private investment firm with more than $1 billion of capital under management.
With this move, Vos said ONX co-founder Phil DeLeon sold his shares to Marlin because he wanted to move to Florida and join his family. Onx also became the first Canadian-solution provider to build solutions for RIM’s new Playbook tablet.
In 2011 Onx also won numerous industry partner of the year awards from Cisco, HP, F5 Networks and VMware. The HP award was its second in as many years.