Computerland buys Turing Solutions

By ADAM GIFFORD

Computerland has bought Christchurch company Turing Solutions for an undisclosed price to bolster its capacity to deliver web solutions.

The two companies have worked together on a number of projects over the past 18 months.

Turing's founders, former AgResearch IT staffer Tim Brown and Ross Brown (no relation), who was a project development manager at Cardinal, will join the Computerland board.

Computerland's general manager, marketing, John Tolchard, said the purchase was "the cornerstone of our whole e-commerce and e-business strategy going forward."

He said Turing Solutions wanted to build the business faster than it could through cash flow, and was looking for an equity partner.

"We have been partners with Turing but to accelerate the momentum in the marketplace we needed total ownership.

"Our challenge now will be how we leverage their experience across the whole group as well as deal with immediate opportunities, which is like drinking from a fire hydrant at the moment," Mr Tolchard said.

Turing general manager Peter Green said the company was started three years ago by the Browns, friends from Otago University, as a custom software development house.

Its work quickly became concentrated in e-commerce applications and web-related business such as intranet and internet development, web design and deployment.

It now has 23 staff.

Computerland chief executive Chris Mackay said his company was looking to buy several other firms with internet expertise.

"We aim to have consistent national representation of web-enabling consultancy, design and development before the end of this year," he said.

"We'll continue to brand this offering separately to Computerland as we want to emphasise the core capabilities of each business unit to the market."

Mr Green said Turing recently confirmed a strategic development partnership with National Mail to develop mail and message translation processing systems.

It has developed an intranet for State Insurance which can be accessed by all the company's business units.

Computerland is one of New Zealand's largest IT services companies.