Telstra Buys Company85
By Australian tier 1 service provider Telstra this week revealed that it has acquired Company85, which was an independent company based in the U.K., for an undisclosed sum.
Company85 was a cloud services and data center company established in 2010 and headquartered in London. It provides solutions in the areas of cloud, data cente, network, security, and workspace. It brings with it 75 employees. And it turns over to Telstra such top-shelf Company85 customers as AstraZeneca, the BBC, and J.P. Morgan.
“Our business can be traced back to the late 1990s when, under the name Company-i, we were a specialist data centre consultancy that grew rapidly to become a trusted adviser to prominent organisations,” explains the Company85 website. “Between 2006 and 2010, prior to our MBO, we were the U.K. and EMEA consulting arm of Symantec Global Services. In 2013 we acquired XOR, a specialist provider of workspace and channel services and in 2015 we acquired DVS Channel Services, experts in data, voice and security consulting. Both are now fully integrated into our business, meaning we can now provide end-to-end enterprise class infrastructure consulting to our clients and partners.”
Telstra leadership says Company85 was highly regarded in the U.K. for its consulting and technical expertise in such areas as automating data
centers. That, the carrier said, aligns with its own technology consulting services for its Australian customers. The deal will enable Telstra both to support its customers in Australia and bolster its efforts to expand abroad, the company commented.
Company85 is just the latest of several acquisitions Telstra has made in recent months. Last year Telstra purchased cloud infrastructure services company Kloud for $40 million AUD. It also bought Readify last year. That company is an IT consulting firm out of Melbourne.
Prior to the Kloud acquisition, Telstra global enterprise and services executive director Michelle Bendschneider had commented to CRN that, prior to that deal, the carrier lacked in enterprise cloud application.
Edited by Alicia Young
