Kerv makes fifth acquisition in under a year with cloudThing buyout

Company says the deal means combined group is now a £35m revenue business

Cloud managed services provider Kerv has made its fifth acquisition in under a year by adding digital transformation specialist cloudThing to the business.

The acquisition of cloudThing, which concentrates on Microsoft Dynamics and Power Platform along with bespoke software development, is the largest of the five deals that Kerv has completed in the last ten months.

It means that the combined group is now a £35m revenue business with more than 330 employees, serving over 800 customers and with offices in London, Birmingham and Bangalore, India.

"This acquisition is a significant step for Kerv and a major investment in the rapidly growing digital transformation market," Alastair Mills, executive chairman at Kerv, said.

"We are combining our existing cloud managed services and infrastructure transformation capability with cloudThing's digital transformation proposition thanks to their combination of DevOps, Data Science, and software engineering services.

"Every aspect of cloudThing - from its strong organic growth model, culture, people, leadership and approach to customers - makes it an ideal fit for the Kerv group."

CloudThing will continue to operate in its existing form as a division of Kerv, with the founders remaining with the business to assist with the next phase of growth.

Current COO Stuart Harper assumes the role of cloudThing chief executive officer and joins the Kerv management team along with Mike Wrout, chief customer officer.

Kerv, which was founded as a three-way merger last year, says it will keep looking at acquiring businesses "which add new capabilities to further enhance its cloud and digital credentials and/or bring new vertical opportunities" while also concentrating on "strong and sustainable organic growth".

"Kerv offers something genuinely unique, a group of complementary cloud and digital organisations that are experts at what they do, given further scale and enhanced capabilities as part of the group," said Harper.

"Kerv's commitment to organic growth, underpinned by a focus on customer experience and employee engagement is central to our own culture and our belief in the mission of the group as a whole.

"It became clear early on in our discussions that both organisations were aligned behind similar values. The whole team at cloudThing is delighted to be joining Alastair, Mike and the crew at Kerv."