Colt expands its cloud-based services portfolio for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and strengthens its channel capabilities
London, 13 August 2012
Colt Technology Services today announced that it has acquired ThinkGrid, a channel-focused cloud platform provider. ThinkGrid enables channel partners to become successful cloud providers in their own right by offering them a comprehensive portfolio of cloud-based services with a turn-key management platform and the commercial and technical training required to grow their cloud business. The acquisition increases Colt’s strength in cloud-based services for the indirect channel and adds approximately 200 resellers and ISV’s to its partner community in the UK.
François Eloy, Executive Vice President at Colt, explains the value ThinkGrid brings to Colt’s business; “The SME market for managed services is set to grow at 15% annually during the coming years. Colt is well positioned to penetrate this market through our indirect channels. The acquisition of ThinkGrid further strengthens our position with the addition of a complementary range of cloud-based services. We also gain a reseller-oriented management platform and portal which will reduce our time to market across our European markets. This acquisition allows us to extend our channel community to include skilled managed services resellers who will help us to accelerate our growth.”
Colt’s channel partners will benefit from ThinkGrid’s advanced capabilities of auto-provisioning and fully flexible billing. ThinkGrid’s comprehensive training programme to facilitate the development of resellers’ cloud capabilities will be rolled out to Colt’s indirect sales team and channel partners. This move makes the information delivery platform real for Colt’s indirect channel, with a comprehensive range of cloud-based services guaranteed by Colt’s SLAs to provide a best-in-class partner experience.
Rob Lovell, CEO of ThinkGrid comments; “Becoming part of Colt Technology Services supports ThinkGrid’s vision to become the world’s leading cloud services enablement platform, offering great product and market development opportunities. ThinkGrid will gain access to Colt’s 20 state-of-the-art data centre facilities, extended research and development and support resources as well as an opportunity to expand into 22 European countries.”
Joining Colt will accelerate ThinkGrid’s growth by leveraging Colt’s market reach, partner community and existing customer base across Europe while giving ThinkGrid’s existing resellers and customers access to Colt’s products and services. ThinkGrid will continue to focus on its three-fold proposition to partners: Platform, Services and Enablement, allowing resellers to build a profitable cloud proposition to serve their end-customers efficiently with a full range of enterprise-class business services.
ENDS
About Colt
Colt is the information delivery platform for Europe, enabling its customers to deliver, share, process and store their vital business information securely. An established leader in delivering integrated computing and network services to major organisations, midsized businesses and wholesale customers, Colt operates a 22-country, 43,000km network that includes metropolitan area networks in 39 major European cities with direct fibre connections into 18,000 buildings and 20 Colt data centres (one in development).
In 2010, the Colt Data Centre Services business was launched to deliver innovative high quality modular data centres which are rapid to deploy and power efficient.
In addition to it’s direct sales capability, Colt has four indirect channels to market; Agent, Franchise, Distributor and Wholesale which includes Carriers, Service Providers, VARs and Voice Resellers.
Colt is listed on the London Stock Exchange (COLT). Information about Colt and its services can be found at www.colt.net.
About ThinkGrid
ThinkGrid is an international enabler of cloud computing that equips IT providers with the tools and help necessary to establish or expand a revenue stream from the cloud. ThinkGrid’s three key component offering consists of a state of the art self-service and billing platform, productized cloud services (including Hosted Virtual Desktop, Virtual Server, Unified Communications, Hosted Email) and above all an enablement and go-to-market program to help partners achieve success. ThinkGrid has a partner ecosystem which encompasses over 300 partners who build and deliver public, private and hybrid cloud services and solutions for over 35,000 users, in different virtual markets and regions.
ThinkGrid has office and datacentre locations in North America, Europe, Ukraine and Australia to support its partner network. For more information please visit: www.thinkgrid.com
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