Six Degrees makes twelfth acquisition

Buy-and-build VAR adds Avaya, Polycom and Radvision partner Aurora to cart

Aggressive managed data VAR Six Degrees has made its twelfth conquest barely a year after coming into being.

The private equity-backed firm has gobbled up City of London-based video conferencing and IP telephony specialist Aurora Networks in a move that will boost its turnover and EBITDA runrate to £54m and £13m, respectively.

Founded in 2003, Avaya, Polycom and Radvision partner Aurora's 22 staff, including its two directors Mark Tyers and Dan Cholerton, will all join the Six Degrees team.

Six Degrees chief executive Alastair Mills, who started the firm last summer on the back of three simultaneous acquisitions, said he had been tracking Aurora's progress for several years.

"This acquisition plugs a gap in our portfolio and allows us to offer new converged services and to add IP telephony to our colocation and cloud-hosting offerings," Mills said.

"It also enables us to offer video as part of our managed data services suite."

Tyers said: "We're joining one of the most ambitious companies in the mid-market, an area which has always been our focus, and we'll be adding new products to an already strong group.

"The potential for us to cross-sell telephony, LAN and video offerings into their existing customers, as well us for us to provide managed data and hosting services to our own, is tremendously appealing to us."