Crayon

OSLO, Norway - Crayon, a leader in IT services and innovation, today announced it has acquired rhipe, an Australia-based cloud and licensing specialist, to further Crayon’s global expansion strategy and services portfolio.

The acquisition comes via a Scheme of Arrangement, which became legally effective today after a due diligence and negotiation period. Upon implementation of the Scheme, Crayon will acquire all rhipe shares.

The acquisition reinforces Crayon’s customer-centric commitment to provide innovation and cost optimization solutions to drive new growth opportunities.

“We are incredibly excited to welcome rhipe to the Crayon family as part of our global expansion strategy,” said Crayon CEO Melissa Mulholland. “rhipe is a leading distributor of cloud solutions and services in the Asia Pacific region and through our combined business models, we will help more customers and partners solve their business needs with a greater portfolio of solutions.”

rhipe is a channel-focused, leading wholesale provider of subscription-based cloud licenses, infrastructure, and services. It was established in 2003 and serves more than 3,000 IT resellers. Implementation of the Scheme of Arrangement is expected to be complete on 3 November 2021. The purchase includes all of rhipe’s 600 employees and its activities across Asia Pacific, as well as the recently acquired Azure services business Parallo, which joined rhipe in September 2020 and emt Distribution, the cyber security software company acquired in April 2021.

“The shareholders of rhipe and the rhipe Board have both overwhelmingly concluded the Scheme represents an attractive outcome for our shareholders, partners, customers, and staff,” said rhipe Chairman Gary Cox. “rhipe’s partners and customers will benefit from the broader global service capability from a combined Crayon and rhipe. In addition, Crayon’s offer is positive news for rhipe’s staff, as we believe there will be increased career opportunities in a larger and more diverse, combined company.”

Crayon has been steadily growing in Australia. It opened its first offices in August 2019, and last year purchased Oracle specialist Navicle, and Winc’s software licensing operations.