Farncombe Consulting Group is to purchase the Professional Services arm of Mirifice Ltd. The deal extends Farncombe into engineering services and testing practices, while leaving Mirifice to concentrate on its multimedia services monitoring and automated set-top testing businesses.
“This agreement is a perfect fit for us,” said Farncombe managing partner Dr Stephen Upton. “The Mirifice team complements and strengthens the skills and experience that Farncombe can offer its existing clients. Farncombe now has the capability to provide end-to-end consulting services to the digital video sector: from strategy and business planning through to implementation and testing.”
Andrew Barker, CEO, Mirifice Ltd said although the company had established itself as a TV consultancy, the principal objective had always been the products business and the time was now right to separate the two. “We weren’t going to have the focus on the consultancy to expand it in the way the team might have liked,” Barker told Broadband TV News. “The products business was where I wanted to focus, but the consultancy was still very healthy and growing.” He added that design and test work that Mirifice had carried out for clients such as Virgin Media and BT Vision compared with Farncombe’s focus on strategy meant the combined company could now run from strategy through to implementation.
All Mirifice Professional Services employees and associates have now transferred from Bath to Farncombe, including Managing Partner Gary Marshall and Sales Director Geoff Aitken. A number of employees who previously worked for Mirifice in London will also transfer to the Bath operations.