Joining Forces

When Peter Anderson, the CEO of Bayshore Technologies, was invited to lunch with Barry Shevlin, CEO of the tech firm Vology, he had no idea the event would change the course of his company, and his daily life.

Anderson, a former soccer player with the Tampa Bay Rowdies, and his two partners, ran a thriving company with $35 million in annual revenues, a business they founded 15 years earlier. Bayshore had become part of the fabric of Tampa Bay's burgeoning tech industry. It helped hospitals, schools, and businesses protect confidential records through virtual networks and storage. If a hurricane or fire struck, clients could swiftly recover data stored as far away as 1,000 miles.

Meanwhile, Shevlin, a onetime cable guy from New York, had built Vology into a powerhouse reseller of routers, switches and security devices for communication networks. He ignited revenues, taking the company from $1 million in 2002, to $90 million in revenues by 2012. But Shevlin knew his firm lacked the capability to be a full-service technology provider. It did not offer the virtual storage and expertise that would make it a formidable one-stop service provider. Vology needed to grow, strategically.