Telecom NZ buys Revera for NZ$96.5m

Telecom New Zealand has said it plans to grow its datacentre and cloud offering after it signed a conditional agreement to acquire IT infrastructure and datacentre company Revera for NZ$96.5 million.

The privately owned Revera was founded in 2002, and has 140 staff across five datacentres in New Zealand. The company has more than 200 New Zealand businesses as customers, and is part of the New Zealand government's infrastructure-as-a-service panel.

Telecom New Zealand said that the Revera buy will allow the company to play into the datacentre market in New Zealand, where there is an industry-wide shortage of premium-grade datacentres.

The company indicated that the Revera brand will be retained, and customers of Gen-i will get access to Revera's additional cloud capabilities and datacentre capacity.

Gen-i chief executive Tim Miles said that this is part of a larger move to make Gen-i more agile and cost effective.

"The acquisition matches the future focus of Gen-i, giving us more datacentre capacity, more virtualisation expertise, and more horsepower to support our clients," he said in a statement.

Revera chief executive Robin Cockayne said that Telecom New Zealand's purchase of the company would allow it to continue growth and investment in resources.

"No single supplier carries all the necessary skills and resources that customers want," he said. "With owner Telecom, Revera will broaden its capabilities and as-a-service platform offerings, and will gain the benefit of Gen-i's sales force selling for us to accelerate our growth."

The announcement comes just one month after Telecom New Zealand announced it would cut up to 1,200 positions. Many of the positions are expected to come from a massive reduction in headcount of Gen-i's Australian workforce.

The Revera deal is expected to be finalised in May.