Pulsant announces acquisition of Onyx and appoints Mike Tobin as chairman

Pulsant, the cloud computing, managed hosting and colocation expert, has announced the acquisition of Onyx, an IT infrastructure services provider. This acquisition forms part of Pulsantโ€™s strategy to enhance capabilities and strengthen its market position. The acquisition will benefit both existing and potential customers.

[easy-tweet tweet=”Pulsant’s acquisition of Onyx will benefit both existing and potential customers” hashtags=”PulsantUK”]

Onyx focuses on providing cloud, colocation, remote and on-site IT management, workplace recovery, applications management and security solutions to customers. Backed by mid-market private equity firm Livingbridge in 2011, it now has five datacentres in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Sheffield and Newcastle, and other business continuity centres and offices around the UK. The companyโ€™s staff, technology platforms and infrastructure will be integrated with Pulsantโ€™s over the coming months.

The combined business will have almost 400 staff, revenues of ยฃ75m and over 4,000 customers in a variety of industries. Its operations are underpinned by a network of 15 owned and operated datacentres across in the UK, and leading-edge private, multi-tenanted and public cloud platforms.

The acquisition will add to Pulsantโ€™s capabilities as a provider of hybrid IT services โ€” particularly in the areas of applications management, remote and on-site managed services, workplace recovery and security โ€” and expand its reach in the UK to deliver more options for resiliency and a stronger portfolio of solutions to customers.

โ€œBringing Onyx and its capabilities into Pulsant is the latest step in our targeted acquisition strategy. The acquisition increases the scale of our business and the breadth of services we can offer, which is crucial as multi-cloud environments become more complex and more important,โ€ says Pulsant CEO Mark Howling.

Neil Stephenson, Onyx CEO, comments: โ€œWe have known Pulsant for many years and always felt that combining Onyx and Pulsant would provide a very strong UK-wide player. Both businesses have complementary capabilities and locations, and this acquisition enables the enlarged business to offer a stronger, broader range of services to our joint customers. The cultures of our two organisations are also very similar, which was a big factor in selecting Pulsant as the acquirer.โ€

This acquisition marks a significant milestone in the development of Pulsant, and is its first major acquisition since Oak Hill and Scottish Equity Partners became Pulsantโ€™s major shareholders in July 2014. As the business moves into its next stage of development, the company has also announced that it has appointed Mike Tobin, OBE, as chairman. Tobin was previously CEO at Telecity for 13 years, overseeing its growth from a market cap of ยฃ6 million to ยฃ1.6 billion, and floating it on the London Stock Exchange in 2007.

Howling says: โ€œMike has an excellent reputation in the industry, a broad understanding of the datacentre and cloud markets and experience of growing businesses in the UK and overseas. I am delighted that he has agreed to become our chairman, which is a significant signal of Pulsantโ€™s quality and ambitions.โ€

Pieter Knook, Pulsantโ€™s existing chairman, will continue to serve on the board as deputy chairman.

[easy-tweet tweet=”The acquisition will add to Pulsantโ€™s capabilities as a provider of hybrid IT services” user=”PulsantUK”]

For more information visit: http://www.pulsant.com/pulsant-acquires-onyx/

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The editorial team behind Compare the Cloud made up a unique group of IT specialists, digital marketers and cloud specialists. We understand the industry from both the IT managerโ€™s perspective and the perspective of the IT service provider.

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