Published on the 18/06/2014 | Written by Newsdesk

Telecom is continuing to reinvent itself in its bid to survive in an increasingly digital marketplace, with the announcement this week of the acquisition of a cloud services business…

The telco has signed a conditional agreement to purchase all of the shares in business cloud services specialist Appserv Limited.

Appserv offers a complete IT infrastructure service to businesses and has proven capability in providing cloud and desktop ‘as-a-service’ offerings with 14-years plus of consistent growth. Its customers range from big to small across a range of industries including professional services, importers, healthcare, retail, government, manufacturing and more. This is supported by a purpose-built data centre.

Telecom New Zealand Chief Executive Simon Moutter said that the acquisition of Appserv adds to the significant investment across Telecom and Gen-i in cloud services and provides a major new piece in the cloud jigsaw puzzle.

Telecom bought Revera (a local data centre firm and one of just a handful of cloud-focused infrastructure providers in New Zealand) in April 2013 for $96.5 million to deepen its IT services portfolio for business customers, in particular cloud services. At the time Moutter said “both Gen-i and Revera will be better positioned to respond to evolving customer needs in the areas of big data and cloud computing”.

In February 2014 Telecom announced it will be rebranding to Spark later in the year to better reflect the changing focus and ongoing diversification of the company, which has moved beyond the home telephone to digital services, fibre, mobile, data, cloud, entertainment, apps, or whatever the future of technology holds.

Following the Appserv announcement Moutter reiterated the importance of cloud computing to Telecom’s growth strategy which focuses on investing in data, mobility and cloud services : “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.”

Telecom Retail CEO Chris Quin said Telecom pursued the opportunity because it sees many thousands of businesses that want to take advantage of the cloud but need help to make the transition.

The combined capabilities of Appserv and Revera mean Telecom can now offer cloud computing expertise to all New Zealand businesses from government and corporates (Revera) to the small to medium sized business needing cloud desktop-as-a-service solutions from Appserv.

Appserv Managing Director, Graham Clarke, said: “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.”

Moutter added, “As we transform to Spark, we think this puts us in an outstanding position to help New Zealand businesses navigate a digital future in which cloud computing will become increasingly important.”