Business briefs: Largo scrubs company, Embarc Collective and more

Prime Medical, a Largo-based company that makes germ-fighting textiles for the healthcare industry, is getting ready to roll out its first Clorox-branded products.

Clorox Healthcare privacy curtains  for hospitals will be available in December, followed by Clorox Pro scrubs and lab coats in February, a news release said.

Prime Medical previously used the SAF-T  brand for its products until the company and Clorox Healthcare announced a joint marketing venture last year. The partnership reflects a common goal of removing healthcare-associated infections from the environment, the companies said.

Soft surfaces are one of the biggest challenges to sanitize, according to Prime Medical, which was founded in 2016 and is led by CEO Jim Sampey, a former president of Valpak.

“The fabric of our privacy curtains, scrubs and lab coats will provide another tool for those in the health care environment to fight HAIs, making soft surfaces an asset rather than a liability,” Sampey said in the news release.

Talent search

Embarc Collective, the Jeff Vinik-backed initiative to elevate Tampa Bay’s startup community, is helping local companies fill their talent pipeline.

Embarc has been collecting data on startup job opportunities, and is sharing it with the community, the organization wrote in a blog posted today on its website.

“We’ve started out with 24 companies, and we will be adding more every week. We’re aiming to measure a variety of topics, including which types of jobs are the most difficult to hire for, the rate at which new jobs get added, and the type and frequency of technical skills being sought,” the blog post said.

Finding and attracting great talent was identified as a top need by the founders who responded to Embarc’s survey earlier this year.

Cloud services

Barry Shevlin, CEO, Vology

Vology, a Clearwater managed IT services provider, is growing its cloud services business by partnering with Google.

Vology is now a premier partner with the Google Cloud Partner Program. The partnership means Vology can sell, service and build more robust solutions and controls to give customers a safe and secure path to the cloud, and to provide support and administration, a news release said.

“Providing industry-leading cloud services has become one of the fastest-growing segments of Vology’s business,”  Barry Shevlin, founder and CEO of Vology, said in the release.

Vology is among the largest managed IT services firms in the Tampa area, with $150 million in 2017 revenue and 220 local employees, according to Tampa Bay Business Journal research. The company monitors, manages and maintains 260,000 devices at 32,000 customer sites.

Data center deal

Hivelocity, a Tampa company that provides data center services, has added sites in Dallas, Seattle and New York City, with the acquisition of Incero.com.

Incero is a 10-year-old Dallas-based company focused on Infrastructure as a Service, or computing that is provisioned and managed over the internet. It allows businesses using the service to avoid the expense and complexity of buying and managing their own physical servers and other datacenter infrastructure.

Hivelocity, founded in 2002, provides servers, cloud hosting, colocation and managed services to thousands of customers in more than 130 countries.

Hivelocity plans to privately connect the Incero data centers with its existing centers in Tampa, Miami, Atlanta, Los Angeles and New York, said Steve Eschweiler, Hivelocity’s chief operating officer.

It’s the second deal in two years for Hivelocity, which bought RackAlley in Los Angeles last year. Both acquisitions were privately funded, but financial terms were not disclosed.

Deal closed

Jeff Gordon, CEO, Vector Soluutions

Golden Gate Capital has finalized its purchase of Vector Solutions, a Tampa-based eLearning company.

The deal will allow Vector to execute on its next phase of growth, said Jeff Gordon, Vector’s CEO.

“Alongside Golden Gate Capital, which has deep software industry and operational experience, we will focus on enhancing our product capabilities and offerings, building out best-in-class delivery competencies, and expanding geographically,” Gordon said in a press release.

Gordon and the current management team will continue to lead Vector.

Golden Gate Capital, a San Francisco-based private equity investment firm, bought Vector from Providence Equity Partners for an undisclosed purchase price, in a deal unveiled earlier this month.