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COLUMBUS TO BUY GLOBAL FIRM Featured

 Thomas Honoré, ColumbusColumbus has made an offer to buy iStone, a firm based in Sweden with 600 employees that operates globally. It represents a substantial expansion for the Denmark-based Columbus which had 1,200 employees when the first half ended on June 30.

The kicker seems to come from these remarks of CEO Thomas Honoré: "Not all customers carry the Microsoft platform. We can have a more complete portfolio, we will also be able to upsell and cross-sell to the iStone installed base." Does this mean don't put all your eggs in the Microsoft basket? The purchase would substantially broaden the Columbus product line. The deal, expected to be completed on January 2, would bring Infor M3 (Lawson) and SAP products to Columbus a Dynamics AX reseller. iStone had a loss of roughly $2.6 million on revenue of about $94.8 million for 2016 with 85 percent of revenue from Sweden and Norway. Revenue for 2017 revenue is expected to be approximately $95.9. Columbus expects to pay $24 million to $40.8 million for iStone over the next three years. The M3 business represents a significant product expansion as iStone has 350 M3 consultants. Founded in 2006, iStone has two other business areas—e-commerce and application management and support.  iStone has offices in Chile, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. The target company has 100 Dynamics consultants and 140 digital commerce specialists and is also a Partner Center of Expertise for SAP, which Columbus says gives it the ability to expand that practice globally. Columbus describes the two companies as having a common focus in the manufacturing, food, retail and distribution industries.

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