OREANDA-NEWS. EarthLink Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ:ELNK), a leading network services provider dedicated to delivering great customer experiences, today announced it has acquired Boston Retail Partners, LLC (“BRP”), a highly regarded management consulting firm focused on the retail vertical. BRP’s experienced consultants work with leading retailers to deliver strategic solutions that address the business and technology challenges unique to the industry.

BRP provides technology strategy and consulting across the full breadth of retail solutions, including point of sale, e-commerce, customer relationship management, mobile, payment security, enterprise resource planning, order management and supply chain. Together, EarthLink and BRP will extend EarthLink’s capabilities in the retail sector to provide clients with deep expertise and end-to-end technology solutions that address the entire retail organization and improve customer engagement and loyalty. The transaction is part of EarthLink’s ongoing strategy to provide deep vertical expertise to its clients and to strategically expand its consulting portfolio with end-to-end solutions to best serve client needs.

“Retailers today often struggle with leveraging technology to create the retail experience of the future, including the shift to cloud-based solutions, the rapid rise of mobile, increasing bandwidth requirements and the prevalence of legacy systems. Many large retailers have relied on BRPs’ expertise and talented people to navigate these challenges,” said Joe Eazor, Chief Executive Officer and President of EarthLink. “We are excited to bring together our deep network expertise with BRPs’ proven track record of success in order to enhance our already strong presence in this space.”

“Customers expect a consistent, personalized and satisfying shopping experience wherever, whenever and however they shop, and retailers need a robust, fast, reliable, resilient network infrastructure to enable this real-time retail experience,” said Ken Morris, Principal, BRP. “Delivering on that experience requires a different approach that sets the stage for unified commerce. According to our recent Customer Experience Survey, 75% of retailers indicated they have implemented or plan to implement a single, unified commerce platform within the next three years. Leveraging EarthLink’s network services and solutions with BRP’s retail expertise enhances our ability to help retailers successfully implement comprehensive unified commerce solutions that enable real-time retail.”

Headquartered in Boston, BRP has 40 nationwide employees.

Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

About EarthLink
EarthLink (EarthLink Holdings Corp., NASDAQ: ELNK) is a leading network services provider dedicated to delivering great customer experiences in a cloud connected world. We help thousands of multi-location businesses securely establish critical connections in the cloud. Our solutions for cloud and hybrid networking, security and compliance, and unified communications provide the cost-effective performance and agility to serve customers anytime, anywhere, via any channel, or any device. We operate a nationwide network spanning 29,000+ fiber route miles, with 90 metro fiber rings and secure data centers that provide ubiquitous data and voice IP coverage. To learn why thousands of specialty retailers, restaurants, franchisors, financial institutions, healthcare providers, professional service firms, local governments, residential consumers and other carriers choose to connect with us, visit us at www.earthlink.com, @earthlink, on LinkedIn and Google+.

About Boston Retail Partners, LLC
Boston Retail Partners, LLC was founded in 2009 by retail industry-recognized thought leaders. BRP is an innovative and independent retail management consulting firm dedicated to providing superior service and enduring value to its clients. BRP combines its consultants' deep retail business knowledge and cross-functional capabilities to deliver superior design and implementation of strategy, technology and process solutions. The company focuses exclusively on the retail industry and consults in three key areas: IT strategy, vendor selection and project implementation. BRP’s consulting services include:

Strategy | Business Intelligence | Business Process Optimization | Point of Sale (POS)
Mobile POS | Payment Security | E-Commerce | Store Systems and Operations | CRM
Unified Commerce | Customer Experience & Engagement | Order Management
Merchandise Management | Supply Chain | Information Technology

The company is a recognized thought leader in the retail sector and continually takes the pulse of the industry through benchmark surveys including the industry-leading annual POS/Customer Engagement Survey they have published for 17 years. In addition, the company publishes benchmark surveys on Customer Experience/Unified Commerce, E-Commerce and Merchandise Planning. For more information, visit www.bostonretailpartners.com.