M&A Moves is a Technical.ly column where we highlight D.C.-area companies completing mergers and making acquisitions to scale their businesses. Got a submission? Email us and tell us why it belongs in the roundup.

MissionSide completes merger deal with Blue Water

MissionSide, a Washington, D.C.-based customer experience provider for mission-oriented government and commercial organizations, announced that it has completed its acquisition deal of another District-based company, digital agency Blue Water.

Blue Water and MissionSide have joined together creating a formidable Agency with extended capabilities across customer experience, digital services, and Agile development & cloud services.https://t.co/ela1MV5opR pic.twitter.com/gx1IU8vMPh

— Blue Water (@BlueWaterDC) July 30, 2019

The deal merges the two companies, bringing together a suite of strategic customer experience capabilities for public and private sector clients. Adam Slagowski, founder and president of MissionSide will lead the new company as CEO, which will retain the Blue Water name. Blue Water’s founder, Curt Schwab, will transition to chief marketing and sales officer while Blue Water’s president, Todd Coen, will step into the role of managing director.

“Bringing MissionSide and Blue Water together helps us complete our vision of not only being able to work with our clients to use design thinking to shape their services, but this also gives us the ability to help our clients operate and manage those services,” Coen said in a statement.

KLDiscovery nails two acquisition deals

McLean, Va.-based KLDiscovery (KLD), provider of electronic discovery and data recovery services to large corporations and law firms, announced that it has acquired New York-based Strategic Legal Solutions (SLS) and Richmond, Va.-based Compiled. Financial terms of the acquisitions were not disclosed but KLD said it expects both companies to be fully integrated with it by this year’s fourth quarter.

SLS is a global provider of end-to-end eDiscovery, corporate and staffing support to AmLaw 100 firms and Fortune 500 corporations across various industries. Compiled curates software to help companies meet tight litigation deadlines while adhering to strict quality standards. KLD reported that the acquisitions are expected to add $12 million of revenue in 2020.

Jay Horowitz, CEO and founder of SLS, will join KLD as senior VP of global solutions strategy and Compiled CEO Justin Blessing will join KLD as director of engineering.

Ntiva expands into the Midwest with HigherGround acquisition

McLean, Va.-based IT consulting company Ntiva is back with another acquisition that puts its tech in the Midwest. The company announced that is has acquired Chicago-based HigherGround, a full-service IT and consulting firm. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Ntiva reports that this acquisition will increase its client base to over 900 organizations located across the U.S.

We're excited to grow our presence into the Midwest with the acquisition of Chicago-based HigherGround Managed Services.https://t.co/Fzq9Og6WgF

— Ntiva (@Ntiva) July 23, 2019

“In addition to the traditional Managed Service Provider (MSP) portfolio, HigherGround brings deep expertise and a proven track record in custom application development and e-mail security,” Steven Freidkin, CEO of Ntiva, said in a press release. “This gives us the ability to offer our clients additional capabilities, adding to an already robust skillset in order to help businesses grow through the effective use of technology.”

This is Ntiva’s third acquisition deal of the year, after acquiring New York-based Diverse Technology Solutions in May and Reston, Va-based managed service provider Network Alliance earlier this year.

Octo Consulting acquires Connexta

Octo Consulting, developer of mission-critical solutions for the federal government across healthcare, national security, civilian and defense agencies, announced that it has acquired Arizona-based Connexta, provider of open source software development and secure discovery solutions for government and commercial customers.

With this acquisition, Connexta will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Reston, Va.-based company. Octo customers will have expanded access to Connexta solution offerings and Connexta’s nearly 130 employees will come under Octo’s wing, with offices in Boston, Mass., Denver, Col., and Phoenix, Ariz.

“Our product offerings augment their services capabilities. Their broader customer base opens up new avenues for agencies to leverage our products. Additionally, we committed to our Connexta employees that we would place culture as a top priority in this process, just as Octo did. We knew very early on in the process that we had found a perfect match in Octo,” Andy Goodson, CEO of Connexta, said in a statement.