Time Warner Cable on Tuesday said it will acquire cloud hosting provider NaviSite for a $230 million purse, marking the second massive cloud computing buy by a major service provider in less than a week.
Time Warner's plan to net NaviSite comes on the heels of Verizon Communications last week announcing plans to acquire cloud infrastructure player Terremark in a $1.4 billion blockbuster buyout.
While Verizon's Terremark purchase is a sign that telecom providers are getting serious about becoming cloud providers, Time Warner's planned acquisition of Andover, Mass.-based NaviSite signals that cable companies, too, are looking to strike while the cloud computing iron is hot and diversify their offerings with the addition of cloud computing services.
According to Time Warner, the goal of the NaviSite acquisition is to grow out its commercial services customer base and its product portfolio with a new suite of managed services and cloud solutions.
"Our commercial services business is a key growth driver for the company and one in which we continue to see great opportunity," said Glenn Britt, Time Warner Cable chairman and CEO, in a statement. "NaviSite provides us with a successful managed services business and a new, innovative managed cloud platform representing significant new growth opportunities. We expect to build upon NaviSite's successful enterprise-class offerings, and their operational capabilities, infrastructure and expertise to more rapidly create a robust managed services offering for small and medium sized businesses. This transaction is consistent with our capital allocation strategy -- selectively investing in our business to accelerate growth while continuing to return capital to shareholders.”
The acquisition gives Time Warner Cable Business Class, the cable provider's commercial services arm, access to NaviSite's more than 1,200 managed services customers.
NaviSite operates 10 data centers in the U.S. and the U.K. including two SAS 70 Type II certified data centers. It also has network operations centers in Gurgaon, India and Andover, Mass. Time Warner plans to add NaviSite's enterprise, cloud-enabled hosting, managed applications and services to its portfolio along with the Application Services, Enterprise Hosting and Managed Cloud Services that NaviSite offers for enterprises looking to outsource their IT infrastructure.
