Telstra acquires datacentre services provider Company85

Telstra has announced acquiring datacentre, cloud, and security services provider Company85 for an undisclosed amount in an effort to expand its technology consulting services into government and enterprise throughout the United Kingdom and Europe.

According to executive director of Telstra Business Technology Services Christopher Smith, the acquisition is targeted at gaining multinational corporate customers that will become reliant on its network services in the region.

"As organisations look to digitise their business ... they are increasingly seeking integrated solutions for their network, security, and cloud infrastructure, as well as advice on how to implement and manage these," Smith said.

"Company85's broad set of consulting capabilities will help us to differentiate our offerings in Europe.

"We will be able to engage in IT transformation conversations with prospective customers early in the proposal stage, which we believe will help to strengthen our position and create demand for our network services in the region."

Company85, headquartered in London, has such customers as the BBC, NHS, London City Airport, Royal Mail, JP Morgan, and AstraZeneca.

Smith added in a post on Telstra's Exchange blog that the Company85 acquisition complements Telstra's previous Kloud and Readify acquisitions.

Telstra acquired Readify, a developer of Microsoft software applications, in July last year, saying it would bolster the telecommunications provider's cloud offerings.

"As we know, apps and software in general are playing an increasingly important role in businesses. Readify is recognised globally for its innovative software solutions and will further help us create software-led digital transformations with our customers," Telstra's executive director of Global Enterprise and Services Michelle Bendschneider said at the time.

"Readify will provide application development and data analytics services, nicely complementing Kloud's existing services. It will enable Telstra to add incremental value to customers in enterprise cloud applications, API-based customisation, and extensions, as well as business technology advisory services."

This followed Telstra's acquisition of Kloud in January 2016, which provides professional and managed services to corporate and government customers across Australia and Asia-Pacific, as well as supplying solutions for productivity, identity, security, application development, and cloud infrastructure for enterprise cloud applications.

Jim Fagan, director of Platforms in Telstra's Global Products business, last year said Kloud and Readify have enabled the telco to provide a more effective and simpler onboarding process for its customers transitioning to the cloud.

"They both had fantastic businesses on their own -- Kloud for what they were doing for their customers with the transition to Microsoft workloads, and they were branching out to AWS at the time when we bought them, and then Readify with their software," Fagan said in September.

Fagan at the time signalled a bigger push into the global cloud market using two new products -- Cloud Gateway and a cloud-management platform -- after embarking on a multi-cloud strategy three years ago, subsequently telling ZDNet that Telstra is focused on being a cloud connectivity provider.

The telco also said securing multi-cloud services is "critical" to its overarching strategy in May last year.

Telstra also acquired unified communications solutions and contact centre provider North Shore Connections (NSC) Group in August 2013; network integration services provider O2 Networks for a reported AU$60 million in January 2014; and information security, networking, and data management provider Bridgepoint in October 2014, along with investing in Chinese cloud company Qiniu in January 2016.