Plano-Based Fortress Solutions Acquired
BUSINESS WIRE – Galatyn Private Equity and Vspeed Capital, LLC today announce the acquisition of Fortress Solutions, Ltd., an industry leader in the repair, refurbishment and life-cycle management of complex back-office equipment for telecommunication and cable service providers. Terms of the acquisition are confidential.
In addition to the acquisition, Fortress Solutions will gain new executive leadership, as Brendon Mills and Brian Alton, Managing Partners of Vspeed Capital; will join the company as CEO and CFO respectively. The company will continue to operate from its headquarters in Plano, Texas and members of management, and current engineering, technician, sales and operations employees will remain in place.
According to Ty Miller, President Galatyn Private Equity, “We are very pleased with the acquisition and addition of Fortress Solutions to our investment portfolio. Fortress Solutions is an exciting player in the multi-billion dollar market for the repair and refurbishment of technology products.”
Fortress Solutions was founded in 2002 and repairs critical back-office equipment for the top telecommunication and cable equipment service providers and vendors in the world. Fortress Solutions supports life-cycle management for mobile voice, data-backhaul, and wireline voice products.
Brendon Mills, incoming CEO of Fortress Solutions, has extensive experience in communications equipment markets. Mr. Mills founded venture-backed GENBAND (General Bandwidth, Inc.) in 1999 and led the company as CEO and President until 2005. In 2006, Mr. Mills founded RipCode, Inc., a video technology company based in Dallas and Austin which focused on the deployment of mobile, three-screen video delivery. In 2010, RipCode was acquired by RGB Networks, a Kleiner, Perkins Caufield, Byers and Accel Partners-backed video technology company. Mr. Mills has held previous positions with Cisco Systems through its acquisition of NetSpeed in 1998, Dell and NetWorth, Inc. Mr. Mills also serves a Senior Advisor to ATEME S.A., a French-based video technology company.
“I am excited to be both an investor and a principal in Fortress Solutions. The company has a long history of profitability and a future with enormous growth potential. The thesis of extending the lifecycle of these long-lived capital assets in the communications market is extremely compelling to customers,” said Brendon Mills.
Also joining Fortress is Brian Alton as Chief Financial Officer. Brian Alton has more than 20 years of successful financial and operational leadership experience with entrepreneurial technology firms, including start-ups, high-growth and turn-around companies. Prior to Fortress Solutions, Brian was the CFO for SensorLogic, a cloud-based service delivery platform to support the development and deployment of M2M (machine-to-machine) applications that was sold to Gemalto. Before SensorLogic, Alton was CFO at RipCode, Inc., and served as a CFO consultant for multiple venture-backed start-ups, including Ignite Technologies and Tango Networks; and was the CFO of Cyneta Networks, a wireless data infrastructure company that was sold to Inet Technologies (now Tektronix).
