Generational Equity Advises NaviLogic in its Sale to ESI Technologies

By Generational Equity

01/24/2022

Generational Equity, a leading mergers and acquisitions advisor for privately held businesses, is pleased to announce the sale of its client NaviLogic, Inc. to ESI Technologies subsidiary, Virtual Guardian. The acquisition closed December 17, 2021.

Located in Saint Paul, Minnesota, NaviLogic offers cyber security, program assessment and management, governance risk and compliance (GRC), compliance and audit, vendor risk management, artificial intelligence (AI), as well as other proprietary consulting solutions. In addition, the company offers software/hardware systems and provides related custom Information Technology (IT) integration services.

Overall, the company’s dependable mission-critical solutions and IoT offerings, combined with an exceptional level of service expertise, remote support capabilities, and SaaS knowledge, provides clients with tools required to succeed in the industry. The company’s uniquely holistic approach identifies what needs to be optimized, augmented, or replaced to ensure its clients’ organizations are maximizing efficiencies while minimizing costs, and, more importantly, security and governance risk.

ESI Technologies, headquartered in Montréal, Québec, Canada (with additional offices in Toronto, Quebec, and Miami, Florida), contributes to business agility and innovation by integrating, connecting, protecting and managing data to turn it into meaningful and competitive insights. Since 1994, the company has been helping Canadian companies accelerate their business by connecting the critical areas of data transformation to actionable knowledge. Their in-depth expertise combined with their market-leading vendor partners enables them to effectively contribute to their customers’ success by leveraging the solutions best adapted to their challenges.

Combined, NaviLogic and Virtual Guardian bring 30 years of enterprise experience in the cybersecurity market to their North American clients, helping to secure organizations’ digital futures in an ever-changing threat landscape. The move comes as a natural extension of Virtual Guardian’s mission to provide elite cybersecurity services to its clients.

For Virtual Guardian, and its parent ESI Technologies Inc., the acquisition further enhances the company’s suite of offerings in the US and enables clients to remain a step ahead of cyber threats. Virtual Guardian and NaviLogic together will work to secure clients’ digital assets and accelerate digital transformation while reducing the costs associated with security operations and regulatory compliance requirements.

For NaviLogic, the acquisition means that their new and existing clients will have access to a greater pool of resources, services, programs and solutions to help mitigate emerging threats and align programs with industry best practices.

“As the world is changing, the way that we are doing business and how we are consuming IT is changing as well. The addition of cloud consumption models has increased the attack surface for clients. These changes, combined with an increase in enabling a remote workforce, has compounded the need for clients to maintain and/or modernize existing IT Infrastructure. The result is an unprecedented increase in vulnerabilities being exploited by attackers,” says Patrick Naoum, ESI Technologies Executive VP – Chief, Strategic Consulting & Emerging Practices.

According to NaviLogic co-founder Bill Strub, “From our first conversation with Virtual Guardian, we recognized a shared dedication to our clients and team along with genuine passion for what we collectively do. Both organizations have strong common values and a great team-based culture. Because of these areas of alignment, in addition to the wonderful people we have met throughout this process, we are excited about this partnership. Together we enable clients to understand the risk and complexities of Information Technology while protecting their digital assets.”

“NaviLogic navigates the programs and tools landscape and finds the right solutions to protect companies’ most critical assets, enabling those businesses to be nimbler and more security savvy. We have always delivered secure, business-driven digital transformation services, and the Virtual Guardian division with NaviLogic onboard is going to elevate what we do best, which translates to a superior class of protection for our clients,” says ESI Technologies’ CEO, Greg Rokos.

Generational Equity Executive Managing Director of M&A – Central Region, Michael Goss, and his team, led by Senior M&A Advisor, Prasad Karcherla, with support from Managing Director, Mergers & Acquisitions, Ryan Johnson, successfully closed the deal. Senior Managing Director Ashok Tandon established the initial relationship with NaviLogic.

“This was one of the most interesting deals I have worked on in the technology space. We got very good response for this deal from various buyers, but eventually we were able to find the best strategic buyer (ESI Technologies) for this deal. This acquisition is a great strategic fit for both NaviLogic and ESI Technologies and I expect great success for both going forward,” said Karcherla.

He added, “I had great pleasure representing Bill Strub and Bob Bennett from NaviLogic and working with Greg Rokos and Pierre Courchesne from ESI Technologies, and I wish all of them the best in their future endeavors.”