Telecom New Zealand enhances its offerings in the digital service segment via the acquisition of AppServ Limited, a business Cloud service specialist. Based on the recent statements by Telecom New Zealand, a major communications service provider in New Zealand, this will add on to its portfolio of cloud services after its acquisition of Revera, a data center provider last year. The acquisition, priced at $17 million, has just been completed last week. The acquisition comes ahead of Telecom's transition to 'Spark' next month, a rebranding initiative that is intended to better reflect its strategy and the growing breadth of its service offerings.
Appserv offers its suite of services through its purpose built data center, serving a wide range of customers across major sectors and has been growing consistently fro the past 14 years. The Auckland based company will enable Telecom New Zealand to combine the capabilities from Revera and AppServ to enhance Telecom and Gen-i Cloud services. In its statement, Telecom cited Ovum's research for MYOB Business Monitor, which showed that only 16% of New Zealand's Small and Medium Enterprises are using the Cloud, highlighting that those who do are 16% more likely to be growing than those that don't. This presents a huge opportunity for players in the cloud services segment as more and more businesses are moving to more agile and leaner infrastructures that cater for a more mobile workforce and address increasing IT capital and operational costs.
According to Telecom New Zealand Chief Executive, Simon Moutter, both Revera and AppServ will be complementary to each other with the former serving the Government and corporate clients, while Appserv provides specialist Cloud Desktop-as-a-Service solutions for a range of business sizes, particularly small to medium sized. Simon said that the Gen-i has secured a number of significant new IT as-a-service contracts and they have added new or imminent data centre business totalling in excess of 250 racks since the beginning of this year.
"We see this as a strategic business move giving the Telecom group a very strong New Zealand Cloud services portfolio. The acquisition of Appserv is an excellent complement to the purchase in 2013 of Revera and the ongoing investment we are making in data centres.”
- Simon Moutter,Chief Executive, Telecom New Zealand
“We pursued this opportunity because many thousands of businesses already supported by Telecom Business Hubs, and other channels within Telecom Retail and Gen-i, want to take advantage of the Cloud but need a hand to get there. We know that the benefits of Cloud computing are still largely untapped by New Zealand business, particularly at the small and medium sized enterprise level. Cloud computing makes it easier for New Zealanders to conduct their business, anywhere, anytime, helping to reduce the hassle and complexity of IT systems. Through Appserv, Telecom can help more New Zealand businesses fulfil their potential using the power of Cloud computing and IT as-a-service.”
- Chris Quin, CEO, xTelecom Retail
“We’re pleased to combine the leading Cloud solutions capability of Appserv with the ambition and reach of the Telecom Group. We’re ambitious ourselves, and we see a perfect fit with our aspirations and how Telecom intends to transform itself to Spark and help more New Zealand businesses grow.”
- Graham Clarke, Managing Director, Appserv
