Colt buys small cloud specialist

Telecoms group Colt has beefed up its presence in the small to medium enterprises (SME) market with a bolt-on acquisition of a UK cloud computing specialist.

Colt has completed the purchase of Fidelity Telecom Limited, a privately owned company which trades under the ThinkGrid name.

MoneyWeek

Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE

Get 6 issues free

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/mw70aro6gl1676370748.jpg

Sign up to Money Morning

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

ThinkGrid's three key component offering consists of: a self-service and billing platform; cloud services products such as Hosted Virtual Desktop, Virtual Server, Unified Communications and Hosted Email; and an enablement and go-to-market programme to help partners achieve success.

The acquisition is too small to require Colt to reveal the price it paid for Fidelity, but it did disclose that the unaudited value of the gross assets being acquired was £0.6m for the financial year ending 31st December 2011.

"The SME market for managed services is set to grow at 15% annually during the coming years," noted Franois Eloy, Executive Vice President at Colt.

"The acquisition of ThinkGrid further strengthens our position with the addition of a complementary range of cloud-based services. We also gain a reseller-oriented management platform and portal which will reduce our time to market across our European markets," Eloy added.

MoneyWeek is written by a team of experienced and award-winning journalists, plus expert columnists. As well as daily digital news and features, MoneyWeek also publishes a weekly magazine, covering investing and personal finance. From share tips, pensions, gold to practical investment tips - we provide a round-up to help you make money and keep it.