Scandinavian operator TeliaSonera has become the latest telco to acquire a cloud services specialist, albeit on a small scale.
The operator has bolstered its cloud and hosting services portfolio with the acquisition of iPeer, a relatively small Swedish company that will become part of the telco's Cygate subsidiary. The purchase price was not disclosed.
iPeer has developed a range of public and private cloud services -- from virtual servers and data centers to dedicated virtualized hosting and storage IT platforms -- which are used by small and large enterprises, including banks and e-commerce operations. The company has 65 staff, two data centers and generated revenues of 56.7 million Swedish kroner (US$7.9 million) in 2013.
Cygate, which Telia Company acquired in 2007, offers a range of network, security, unified communications and cloud/data center services to enterprise customers in Sweden. The acquisition of iPeer will enable Cygate to offer "new types of cloud services supplementing our strong offering of business solutions." (See TeliaSonera Closing on Cygate.)
Earlier this year, TeliaSonera, which has operations across Northern Europe and Eurasia, acquired a cloud and IT services specialist in Denmark. (See TeliaSonera Acquires Síminn Danmark.)
The ability to offer an extensive set of private, public and hybrid cloud services is becoming vital for any communications service provider wanting to grow its revenues from enterprise customers and make the best use of its network assets: TeliaSonera has been investing heavily in its fiber broadband and 4G mobile networks, and sees the combination of high-speed fixed and wireless access services with a broad range of business applications as a formula that can meet the demands of large and small enterprise users.
— Ray Le Maistre, 
, Editor-in-Chief, Light Reading
Things are moving pretty fast. I remember back just ... what, one or two years ago when people were questioning if the Cloud was just passing hype? In retrospect it's like the hype surrounding the Internet and then Social Media -- yes there's hype, but the hype is because it really does change everything.