Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC) has announced plans to buy NaviSite (NASDAQ: NAVI) in a $230 million deal through which Time Warner will inherit more than a thousand business customers who use managed services.
NaviSite offers a variety of hosting, cloud computing, messaging and other services.
The buyout follows on the heels of Verizon’s announced plan to acquire cloud services provider Terremark for $1.4 billion, indicating that a race for delivering more cloud services is heating up.
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"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, Chairman and CEO of Time Warner Cable, 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."
Gartner analyst Lydia Leong wrote in a blog post that she was surprised it was Time Warner Cable rather than Time Warner Telecom making the deal given that getting into this business is "virgin territory" for such a company.
NaviSite employs 570 people worldwide and runs 10 data centers in the United States and United Kingdom, as well as network operations centers in Massachusetts and India. NaviSite cloud computing experts are regularly sought after to speak on subjects such as rogue use of cloud services.
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