SCC makes good on voice acquisition pledge

SCC will form strategic partnership with SIPCOM after parent Rigby Group acquires minority stake in hosted voice outfit

After pledging to acquire its way into the voice services market earlier this summer, SCC has got its man courtesy of parent Rigby Group's latest M&A manoeuvre.

Rigby Group announced this morning it has acquired a minority stake in UK-based cloud services provider SIPCOM, which specialises in offering hosted voice and unified communications as a service (UCaaS).

Microsoft, Oracle and Broadsoft partner SIPCOM will now form a "strategic partnership" with SCC, building on SCC's recent run of acquisitions in the datacentre space.

SCC's datacentre services business grew 87 per cent in its last financial year on the back of its acquisition of SSE Telecoms' Hampshire datacentre. It also bought data telecoms outfit Fluidata earlier this year.

The reseller and services firm said SIPCOM, which operates seven datacentres internationally, will enhance its unified comms proposition with specialist Microsoft, SIP and hosted PBX capabilities.

SCC chief executive James Rigby (pictured) said: "This deal underlines our three- to five-year growth plan in positioning SCC as a leading datacentre and cloud services provider.

"Adding Fluidata's network and SIPCOM's hosted voice and UCaaS capabilities to our datacentre services delivers a very compelling cloud-delivered managed services proposition to our customers and the markets we operate in."

Rigby Group did not divulge terms of the deal outside of saying it had acquired a minority stake in London-based SIPCOM. It represents its 15th piece of M&A activity since 2013.

SIPCOM claims to have invested about $5m in its own cloud and hosted platforms across seven datacentres across North America and EMEA.

With Rigby Group's help, SIPCOM said it is now looking to "build its plan to 200,000 cloud-based users" by the end of 2018.

SIPCOM chief executive Daniel Allen said: "The investment from Rigby Group positions SIPCOM firmly in the mid-market space - and offers customers the value and comfort they expect when selecting a cloud service provider."