Best Buy Sells its Cloud Service
Best Buy is working toward becoming a more agile and focused retail company than in years past. The big box retailer has seen resurgence in its stock price although many investment analysts thought that the company’s days were numbered. Best Buy jumped onto the cloud bandwagon for small to medium businesses because they saw so much potential growth in the market. Best Buy acquired mindSHIFT in 2011 for $167M. Best Buy has since decided to sell mindSHIFT to Ricoh. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Ricoh is a Japanese company and they decided to buy mindSHIFT from BestBuy in order to broaden their reach into the American market.
Since Best Buy specializes in selling media and media devices, using the cloud as a backup seemed like a pretty convincing sales pitch. For the most part, it worked. mindSHIFT has enjoyed relative success as it has attracted customers all over the USA. mindSHIFT employs 650 people and although the terms of the deal aren’t visible, the management and staff are expected to stay in place and there should be no immediate change in day to day business.
MindShift’s CEO released a statement about the acquisition. Mona Abutaleb said, “At mindSHIFT, we are proud to have the most comprehensive IT Services portfolio for small and mid-sized business customers in the industry and are excited to become a part of the Ricoh family. With Ricoh’s keen focus on business customers, their leadership position in the small and mid-sized business space and our common philosophy in delivering innovative ways to solve technology challenges, we believe we can deliver even more value to customers together.”
Best Buy’s spokesperson made comments on the deal saying, “As we have made clear over the past year, our Renew Blue business transformation calls for greater focus on the core of Best Buy’s business.” The deal is expected to fully close by the end of February 2014.
