CI-Net has completed the acquisition of business Internet service provider (ISP), Interdart, giving it additional expertise and capacity to target the SME sector and to exploit the growing demand for managed server hosting.
The Managing Director of Kidlington, Oxford-based, CI-Net, which provides managed wide area networks, hosting and Internet solutions to large UK corporate and public sector organisations, said:
“Despite the downturn, we believe there are still opportunities out there and this deal is part of a proactive growth strategy in which we’re seeking targeted acquisitions to increase market share and enhance our ability to provide value and quality to customers.”
“With this particular acquisition we’re going to benefit from Interdart’s success in targeting small and medium sized businesses and its extensive experience in delivering managed server hosting services. In the current climate, cash strapped, smaller companies are looking for ways to control IT costs while streamlining workloads and this includes outsourcing hosting of email and other servers. We believe this is driving demand in the managed hosting market.”
The CEO of CI-Net’s parent company, Community Internet Group Limited, said: “Future acquisition targets will come from the UK business ISP sector, where we see potential for growth and we’re already talking to a number of companies in the area. We’re looking to acquisitions as an immediate route to increasing our customer base and adding to our infrastructure, allowing us to achieve significant economies of scale. Customers will be better served by our ability to deliver improved value and quality Internet services, backed by increased capacity and a more resilient, wider infrastructure with more interconnects. And of course the bigger customer base will get the chance to tap into our WAN and security solutions.”
The addition of Interdart’s customer base will give CI-Net a total of 2,500 active UK customers and the company believes this will generate new business as both sets of customers will benefit from the wider portfolio of products and services they will have access to:
“Our resilient wide area networking, security and managed services offerings will be of interest to the incoming Interdart customer base and our existing customers will benefit from the added server hosting capabilities that Interdart brings,” said McLean.
The deal is good news for Interdart customers who have received assurances of continuity of service from CI-Net:
“We aim to ensure Interdart customers enjoy a seamless transition to CI-Net,” said James Smith, CI-Net Customer Service Manager. “We hope customers will enjoy the benefits of being supported by a bigger organisation that will be able to offer them a high level of support and a wide range of products, services and expertise to meet their network and communications needs,” he continued.