May 14, 2009 : iomart Acquires RapidSwitch

📅 May 14, 2009 - The purchase of RapidSwitch provides the company with a fifth data centre to add to its existing portfolio of 4 newly commissioned UK wide properties.

iomart, a managed hosting and data centre company, today announced that it has acquired the entire issued share capital of RapidSwitch Limited, a managed hosting provider and currently ranked by Deloittes as the 10th fastest growing technology company in the UK, for £4.3M cash on completion with a further £0.95M payable on 31st March 2010.

The company claims that in recent years, RapidSwitch has achieved strong organic growth via a high rate of repeat business and referrals, through its reputation for excellent customer delivery and service. It adds that the purchase of RapidSwitch provides the company (iomart) with a fifth data centre, to add to its existing portfolio of 4 newly commissioned UK wide properties. RapidSwitch's data centre, located in Maidenhead, Berkshire, is newly commissioned and operational, and when fully built out it will give it the capacity to accommodate a further 600 racks, avers the company.

Angus MacSween, CEO iomart Group plc, stated: "iomart Group's strong balance sheet, a direct result of our recent disposal of our noncore directory business to BT, has released cash to make strategic acquisitions. The acquisition is in line with iomart's strategy of becoming the UK's foremost hosting company, focused on the delivery of managed hosting environments and solutions, be they virtual, dedicated, cloud, or SaaS." He added, "The purchase of RapidSwitch provides us with additional highly skilled technical expertise and increases the Group's data centre capacity significantly. We are now even better placed to service a comprehensive range of hosted servers, high density cloud computing, virtualisation and disaster recovery solutions to our clients."

Ed Butler, MD of RapidSwitch stated: "We believe today's announcement will bring enormous benefits to both our employees and customers alike. Over the past decade we have worked hard to build RapidSwitch into one of the fastest growing and most respected dedicated servers companies in the UK. We believe that in joining the iomart group, we will benefit from the economies of scale, ensuring that we have the opportunity continue our rapid growth by reaching new and exciting hosting markets." He added: "The synergies between the two companies are marked. Both iomart group and RapidSwitch have over a decade of hosting experience, own and manage data centre infrastructure, and most importantly understand the importance of high availability and customer service."