Time Warner Cable, a telecommunications company spun out from media conglomerate Time Warner, has announced its intention to acquire cloud and managed hosting provider Navisite for around $230 million.
The deal shortly follows the acquisition of cloud provider Terremark by another US telco, Verizon Business.
Together, the deals suggest that the cloud hosting industry may be consolidated into the telecommunications business. It is a logical fit, as both types of company use a utility billing model.
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Already, independent hosting provider Savvis’ future is the subject of speculation.
Navisite offers managed hosting, application and cloud computing services. As well as nine data centres in the US, Navisite has one facility in Woking. The Woking site is housed in a facility operated by data centre development firm Sentrum, whose CEO Andy Ruhan is the chairman of Navisite’s board of directors.
In the financial year ending July 31 2010, Navisite’s revenues were $126.1 million, roughly flat from the previous year. It made around $10 million in profit. In July, the company batted off a $72 million buyout bid from one its shareholders, Atlantic Investors.
Time Warner Cable, which was spun out of Time Warner in 2008 but is still majority owned by the company, provides cable TV, Internet and telephony services for consumers and has a business division that targets small and medium-sized organisations.
The IT and telecommunications industries of the UK were seen converging earlier this month, as mobile telco O2 launched a joint venture with IT services provider 2e2. O2 Unify will launch a managed wide area network (WAN) service later this year.
