Optima ICM plans to merge its four business units into one company as part of its bid to expand its service offerings to the education and government sectors.

Optima will merge its PC manufacturing business Optima Comptuer Technology with SME outsourcing outfit Iocom Solution, Web access provider Fortress Network and its systems integrator OpenNet BI – the company it acquired from Powerlan in August last year.

“The whole reason [for the merge] is to provide an end to end solution in our target markets,” Optima managing director, Cornel Ung, said. “We have a 45 per cent share of the education hardware business and we also do very well in the government sectors. We believe they would like Optima to provide more than just hardware.”

Ung acknowledges the company’s move into the services market will take time.

Its current services arm, OpenNet BI, has not performed as well as expected to date and has been reorganised to reduce the overhead costs.

But Ung hopes being able to offer complete technology solutions at both the hardware and services level, will help expand the overall reach of the company and boost the service offering.

“I don’t see it [services] being more than 50 per cent of our revenue in the next few years,” he said. “More than 80 per cent of our business is in hardware and it is still our core business.

"By comparison, the Powerlan business revenue is not that significant. That is one of the reasons for the merge – because it is not big enough to provide just service.”

With its education customers specifically in mind, Optima will implement its service offerings later this year. It recently opened offices in Perth and Adelaide.

The Perth office will target the education market, where Optima has yet to make its mark.

“We believe we need to set up offices in Perth if we want to be a major player there," Ungsaid. "That’s our first step. Later we will offer our professional services infrastructure.”

The company will also open offices in Canberra to help foster relationships with government outsources such as EDS and CSC.

“We have worked with them around two years ago but since then we have not put a lot of focus on that part of the business,” Ung said. “The expansion into Canberra will help reinforce that relationship.”