A Tampa consulting firm with ties to state and local schools and government is acquiring an Atlanta-area technology solutions company in a move that will nearly double its tech support staff.
MGT Consulting Group announced Thursday that it will absorb Norcross, Ga.’s Layer 3 Communications in a deal designed to bolster its IT, cloud and cybersecurity offerings. The merger will boost MGT’s technology services division from around 100 employees to around 230.
An MGT spokesperson declined to disclose terms of the deal.
MGT has 430 employees nationwide, including 35 in its home base of Tampa. Layer 3 will retain its own branding, offices and leadership structure in order to prevent disruption to its existing clients, which include Dell EMC and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
“We’re excited to embark on this next evolution of our companies together and look forward to leveraging and elevating the strengths of our organizations to provide an even higher level of comprehensive services to our customers,” Layer 3 president and CEO Rodney Turner said in a statement.
MGT’s CEO is Trey Traviesa, a former Republican state lawmaker from Tampa. Traviesa’s political connections landed MGT in the spotlight earlier this year, when the company bid on a Department of Education contract to help manage Jefferson County’s school district.
Traviesa is a former colleague of then-education commissioner Richard Corcoran, and state records showed the department was already in talks about with MGT before the bid process was announced last fall. MGT was the only pre-approved vendor to apply for the $2.5 million annual contract, leading to an inspector general investigation over a possible conflict of interest.
Before that, MGT had secured a multimillion-dollar contract to manage eight struggling Hillsborough County schools, including Robles, Foster and Oak Park elementary schools.
Outside the realm of education, MGT recently oversaw a Hillsborough-backed public equity story, in which it determined county officials needed to invest more in projects like public transportation and apprenticeship programs to better serve local minority communities.
In a statement, Traviesa said the Layer 3 merger would enable MGT to tackle more complex cloud and network programs “in this mission-critical and rapidly growing area of public agency performance for increased social impact and safety.”