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.

Although based in the UK, Fidelity Telecom is an international enabler of cloud computing (where applications and data are stored on a remote server) that equips information technology providers with the tools and help necessary to establish or expand a revenue stream from the cloud.

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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.

JH