Upward-marching Colt is continuing with its programme of investments and has added privately held UK-based Fidelity Telecom, which trades under the name ThinkGrid, to its line of services. The acquisition maintains Colt’s commitment to providing network and infrastructure services rather than deviating into applications and process-type service lines. This is one of its strengths and one of the reasons why its performance has been heading the right way over the last year or so (see Colt stands and starts to deliver and Colt’s year of improvement continues). Financial details were not revealed but as ThinkGrid had gross assets of just £0.6m for the year ending December 2011, the deal will be small.
ThinkGrid is a channel-focused cloud platform provider, providing cloud services to enable partners to become cloud providers themselves. It will add 200 UK resellers and ISV’s to Colt’s UK partner network, enabling Colt to further cascade its services, particularly within the expanding SME market. The channel-oriented capabilities are the main reason for the acquisition, from the reseller oriented management platform and portal, to auto provisioning and metering and billing services. They expand Colt’s channel offerings and mark this a tidy tuck-in acquisition.