Rackspace Hosting said Monday it would buy Datapipe, uniting two of the world's largest managed services providers into a global powerhouse with extensive multi-cloud capabilities.
This acquisition, the largest in San Antonio, Texas-based Rackspace's history, looks to create a managed services juggernaut with a global data center footprint, a broad customer base and deep alliances spanning all of the major cloud operators.
"We want to be the leader in multi-cloud management. We're going for it," Matt Bradley, chief strategy officer at Rackspace, told CRN. "We see the market as being huge. It will make us the largest player in managed public cloud, largest player in private clouds, continued largest player in managed hosting."
[Related: Rackspace Launches Global Solutions And Services Business]
The Datapipe deal comes only months after Rackspace agreed to buy TriCore Solutions, an application management specialist that at the time was its largest acquisition to date.
Richard Dolan, Datapipe's senior vice president of marketing, told CRN it made sense for two companies that so often come up against each other in the market to join forces.
"We're really looking at this as the best way to step forward and embrace the amount of business we see out there," Dolan said.
Rackspace did not say what it will pay for Datapipe, an MSP based in Jersey City, N.J. The acquisition will be financed with debt and equity.
Bradley said the combined entity would see annual revenue of $2.4 billion, and employ roughly 6,700 people.
Both MSPs have substantial hosting businesses through their own data centers, as well as partnerships with hyper-scale cloud providers. Both are among the largest MSPs in the AWS ecosystem.
Datapipe's infrastructure, custom-built automation tools, extensive certifications and high-skilled employees will be valuable additions to Rackspace's portfolio, Bradley said.
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