iomart picks up RapidSwitch

Acquisition in line with iomart's strategy of becoming the UK's foremost hosting company

iomart's Angus MacSween

Managed hosting provider iomart has grabbed fast-growing rival RapidSwitch in a deal worth up to £5.25m.

RapidSwitch was ranked by Deloitte as the tenth fastest-growing UK technology firm last year, after growing revenues from £1.4m to £2.6m in the 12 months to March 2008.

The deal will hand iomart – which claims to be one of Europe’s largest providers of managed hosting, colocation, datacentre and cloud services – a fifth UK datacentre.

Angus MacSween, chief executive of iomart Group, said the firm’s recent disposal of its non-core directory business to BT had released cash to make the acquisition.

“The acquisition is in line with iomart’s strategy of becoming the UK’s foremost hosting company, focused on the delivery of managed hosting environments and solutions, be they virtual, dedicated, cloud or SaaS,” he said.

RapidSwitch manages 4,000 servers and serves 1,600 business customers from its Maidenhead datacentre. All of its 20 staff will remain on board and it will trade as a separate entity within iomart.

The deal is comprised of £4.3m in cash on completion and a further £0.95m payable on 31 March 2010.

RapidSwitch managing director Ed Butler said: “Over the past decade we have worked hard to build RapidSwitch into one of the fastest growing and most respected dedicated servers companies in the UK.

“We believe that in joining the iomart group, we will benefit from the economies of scale, ensuring that we have the opportunity continue our rapid growth by reaching new and exciting hosting markets.”