Infranet Technologies Group, an IT integration and consulting firm in Wilmington, recently merged with WebPoint IT Solutions, a managed services company.

Infranet is based in eastern North Carolina, and WebPoint operated from eastern North Carolina to Virginia.

“Geographically we each had a strong presence in different territories,” John Livesay, chief sales officer, said in an email after the July deal took place.

Michael Chittum, the current CEO, founded Infranet Technologies in 1998. Livesay, who came on board in 2011, said the original goal of the company was sales and service, but those goals have changed to a more consultative and advisory role.

“Technology is pervasive now into every aspect of a business,” he said. “You can’t go out and just purchase a new product that makes your business better. You need a comprehensive strategy around how it all fits together and how to manage it.”

Rocky Mount-based WebPoint IT, started in 1993 as an ISP in its area operating as Web-Point Communications. It served as the internal IT department for its parent company, Rawls & Winstead Inc., and in 2006 became a standalone company. In 2007, it rebranded to WebPoint IT Solutions. 

By merging with WebPoint, Infranet expands its services to include managed services, which provides on-going IT systems monitoring and management.

Services the firm offered before the merger (and continue to offer) cover two areas: unified collaboration, which includes voice, video, network and data communications, and data center solutions, which involves cloud or other types of storage as well as disaster recovery. 

Aside from expanding the services the company offers, the merger also increased the number of people employed by Infranet.

“Infranet had approximately 23 employees across our Wilmington headquarters office and our Raleigh office,” Livesay said. “With the merger with WebPoint, we are now more than 60 employees strong across our four offices in Wilmington, Raleigh, Rocky Mount and Richmond, Virginia, and we have plans for continued growth.”

The merger also allowed Infranet to expand its coverage area, but it wasn’t one sided in terms of benefit, company officials said.

“We had very complementary service offerings. And the leadership at both organizations had the same philosophical approach: to
be an advocate for technology for our clients and assist them to implement and support solutions that have a positive impact on their operations,” Livesay said.

Though the official date of the merger was July 1, Livesay said the deal had been in the works for months. They tried to make the transition as smooth as possible for everyone involved.

“We even let our employees know early so they could take part in the integration of the two organizations,” Livesay said. “Our goal was to have as little impact on our clients and employees as possible. We are taking the best of both companies and merging them into a single entity. Our client responses have been very positive, and we are very excited about the future at Infranet.”