The Getronics family, a group operating under the brands of Getronics, GWA and Connectis, today announces that it has expanded its European Cloud business via the acquisition of Colt’s managed cloud business (“Colt Managed Cloud”).

Furthermore, a long-term strategic partnership has been agreed between the Getronics family and Colt, where the Getronics family will provide Managed Cloud services to Colt’s customer base and the Getronics family will utilise Colt’s network, voice and data centre capabilities.

The deal includes the acquisition of Cloud technologies and support services across 10 countries (the UK, France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, India, Romania and Switzerland).

Colt Managed Cloud employs staff working across operations, transition and engagement, presales, service management and support functions and has around 600 customers across multiple verticals including financial services, media and government, which will benefit from a long term, secure and seamless provision of services.

The Getronics family has been realising a dramatic portfolio shift since its acquisition by Aurelius in 2012. Its focus and investment in a portfolio of IT Services has paid off, transforming the heritage Workspace provider into a digitally-focussed organisation, dedicated to the end-user, providing customers with best in class future-ready IT services.

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Various acquisitions have strengthened this shift towards the newer portfolio, such as Spanish acquisitions Thales, Telvent and Steria Iberica which bolstered the Getronics family’s Apps expertise, and NEC’s direct sales & services business in four countries which strengthened their Unified Communications capabilities.

Similarly, the Cloud platform being acquired from Colt will be highly complementary to the Getronics family’s own fast-growing Cloud Services platform enabling the group to offer pan-European Cloud services to its customers.

The platform is well invested in and advanced, being positioned by Gartner as a leader in the European Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud-enabled Managed Hosting for the past three consecutive years.

Mark Cook, Getronics Group CEO, confirmed that the board has been “relentlessly pursuing our digital transformation and portfolio shift strategy”.

“Today’s announcement demonstrates our commitment to offering the latest, best of breed IT services to our customers,” he continued.

“We are delighted with this latest acquisition, and we are looking forward to welcoming the transferring customers and employees into the Getronics family in the New Year.”

Rakesh Bhasin, Colt CEO, added he was “pleased that we have reached an agreement with Getronics, a leading European provider of IT Services”.

“This transaction is a positive step for our customers as it provides an expanded set of innovative services and long term security from an established, growing company'” he said. “It also provides an exciting future for our employees. We look forward to partnering with Getronics through this transaction on a long term basis.” 

The financial terms of the deal are undisclosed. The completion of this transaction is subject to regulatory and competition clearances and compliance with local labour laws.

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