Co-founders Nanette Kische and Mike Eaton to Join Fast-Growing Platform as Partners
NEW YORK, Sept. 15, 2022 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- UPSTACK, the fast-growing platform that combines the industry's leading advisors, advanced technology and dedicated customer support resources, announced today that it acquired Stellar Connect, an independent, full-service provider of IT services based in Thousand Oaks, Calif. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Stellar Connect, founded in 2014, provides consultative, vendor-agnostic IT and telecom procurement, management and support primarily to small and midmarket businesses. The company's areas of expertise include voice, data, cloud infrastructure, UCaaS, network, business continuity and disaster recovery. Stellar Connect was built on long-term partnerships with its clients and providing solutions to their evolving and complex technology challenges.
As part of the investment, Principals and Co-founders Nanette Kische and Mike Eaton will join UPSTACK as Partners. Additionally, Stellar Connect's operations manager will join the UPSTACK support team.
"Built on a strong partnership between Nanette and Mike, Stellar Connect is a successful and respected technology services firm with decades of in-depth experience," said UPSTACK Founder and CEO Christopher Trapp. "Their entrepreneurial spirit and holistic approach to solving complex IT challenges align with ours, and we're excited to welcome the Stellar Connect team to UPSTACK."
Kische and Eaton first met on a high school ski trip. Eaton began a career in IT, eventually becoming a serial entrepreneur, creating and selling several technology ventures. Meanwhile, Kische spent her early professional life as a Public Accountant. One of Kische's accounting clients, a telecom agency, encouraged her to sell telecom during her slow accounting months. By the early 2000s, she had made the career switch.
Kische and Eaton serendipitously reconnected while working on a project for a mutual client where Kische served as a telecom agent and Eaton as a cloud and managed services provider. They worked together as projects allowed and ultimately formed Stellar Connect to provide both telecom and IT solutions to their customers.
"Our business philosophy is about relationships," said Kische. "If you do them well, you'll be successful. And if you don't, you won't. Solving IT problems is what we're known for but helping clients we care about makes it meaningful."
Kische and Eaton said that joining UPSTACK will enable them to scale their services, giving their clients access to more resources and professional experience. It also provides a continuity plan for Stellar Connect's valued clients.
"UPSTACK has built a talented team coupled with the support to take care of our customers," said Eaton. "That's pretty powerful. It allows us to scale in a way that would be difficult on our own and still provide the level of service we're known for. Joining UPSTACK allows us to do more for our clients, and that's exciting."
For more information about UPSTACK's agency investment program, contact [email protected].
About Stellar Connect
Stellar Connect is a full-service provider of IT services with extensive capabilities in several key areas, including voice, data, cloud, security, business continuity and disaster recovery. Stellar Connect is a team of technology infrastructure specialists who provide solutions to their clients' complex IT problems while establishing long-term relationships that grow with the client's changing technology needs. For more information, visit http://www.stellarconnect.com
About UPSTACK
Launched in 2017 in New York, N.Y., UPSTACK is transforming the way digital infrastructure is sourced and sold. Through a powerful combination of the industry's leading advisors, advanced technology, and dedicated customer support resources—UPSTACK uses actionable business intelligence to architect and source customized technology solutions for businesses of all sizes. With UPSTACK, business buyers streamline IT procurement by tapping into a single source for mission-critical technology services from hundreds of proven providers, along with the professional guidance to identify and evaluate the best solutions. UPSTACK's service portfolio includes colocation and data center, network connectivity, SD-WAN, unified communications, cloud contact center, private and public cloud, security, mobile, business continuity and IoT. For more information, visit us at upstack.com.
Media Contact
Khali Henderson, BuzzTheory (for UPSTACK), 480.999.5297, [email protected]
SOURCE UPSTACK
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