Pulsant makes big hybrid cloud move with £65m Onyx buy

AcquisitionsData Centre

Acquisition creates £75 million turnover company with 400 staff and 15 data centres

Cloud services and co-location firm Pulsant has acquired Onyx, an IT infrastructure services provider. The acquisition will benefit both existing and potential customers, said Pulsant.

The acquisition price has not been disclosed but industry analyst TechMarketView reckons it’s around £65 million. Onyx focuses on providing cloud, co-location, remote and on-site IT management, workplace recovery, applications management and security solutions to customers.

Backed by mid-market private equity firm Livingbridge in 2011, Onyx has five data centres in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Sheffield and Newcastle, and other business continuity centres and offices around the UK.

Hybridcloud1-684x250 CloudThe company’s staff, technology platforms and infrastructure will be integrated with Pulsant’s over the coming months, said Pulsant.

The combined business will have almost 400 staff, revenues of £75 million and over 4,000 customers in a variety of industries. Its operations are now underpinned by a network of 15 owned and operated data centres across in the UK, and private, multi-tenanted and public cloud platforms.

The acquisition will add to Pulsant’s capabilities as a provider of hybrid IT services — particularly in the areas of applications management, remote and on-site managed services, workplace recovery and security — and expand its reach in the UK to deliver more options for resiliency and a stronger portfolio of solutions to customers, Pulsant said.

Bringing Onyx and its capabilities into Pulsant is the latest step in our targeted acquisition strategy. The acquisition increases the scale of our business and the breadth of services we can offer, which is crucial as multi-cloud environments become more complex and more important,” said Pulsant CEO Mark Howling.

This acquisition is Pulsant’s first since Oak Hill and Scottish Equity Partners became Pulsant’s major shareholders in July 2014. The company has also announced that it has appointed Mike Tobin as chairman. Tobin was previously CEO at Telecity for 13 years.

@AntonySavvas

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