PEORIA HEIGHTS, Ill. — Three local tech giants have joined forces.
Information technology and managed service provider Pearl Technology has absorbed data center specialist A5 and IT security guru CIAN.
Pearl President Dave Johnson said other than the legal paperwork saying Pearl owns both companies, everything else will remain status quo.
“Customers will be seeing the same people they’ve always seen. We took every employee and nobody got dropped,” he said.
“They’ll be calling the same phone numbers, and that way it’s just less disruptive to the customers.
“And we think we’re going to keep the names [of A5 and CIAN] operational for about 12 months. It’s just kind of like a soft opening.”
CIAN and A5 owner and operator Steve Hope will remain on in a consultant’s role, Johnson said.
The merger made sense according to Johnson because each company specializes in a different service.
“The thing we specialized in, managed services, is something CIAN didn’t do a lot of,” he said.
“CIAN is, without question, the best IT security company in the area. A5 is the only real company in the area that has two data centers.
“So there’s just a whole plethora of services now we can offer together, integrated.”
Pearl completed the purchase Jan. 2 after a 15-month process.
