Telstra announced that it has reached an agreement to purchase Kloud, a managed services and consultancy company that helps companies and government organisations make and deliver their strategy on cloud. The deal is believed to be in the region of AU$40 million according the Business Spectator. With customers such as City holdings, ServiceStream and the Queensland government Telstra has not only gained consultants but relationships with a wide range of businesses.
The announcement was also the topic in a Kloud blog with Nicki Bowers, Managing Director, Kloud, saying: “Kloud and Telstra have been longstanding partners for many years so the potential for our people, our customers and partners was clear to see. We have watched and worked closely with Telstra in their move into ICT services and were keen to become a more integral part of it.”
This statement is interesting as Kloud currently lists three primary cloud partners, Telstra, Microsoft and Amazon. While the Telstra announcement mentions Telstra it does not mention the Kloud relationship with Amazon. One wonders whether Kloud will retain the independent objectivity that it aspires to when placed under the Telstra wing.
Once the agreement has finalised in February Telstra will gain around 150 new employees across its locations in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Manila as well as the 80 customers. Interestingly the Brisbane office noted on the Kloud website appears to be missing from the list. Equally strange the website makes no mention of the Manila office which is where we assume Kloud services its other APAC region customers from, most of whom are based in Singapore.
While the relationship with Amazon is in doubt, the Microsoft one definitely isn’t and one suspects that with Telstra also acquiring other Microsoft partners it is looking to ramp up its capabilities in this area. Kloud is a Microsoft Gold partner and has expertise in deploying Office 365, Skype for Business, SharePoint and .Net development projects.
Telstra Executive Director Global Enterprise and Services, Michelle Bendschneider believes that these capabilities will assist Telstra with its own customers. She commented: “We are committed to helping Telstra customers increase agility, lower costs and increase their competitive advantage. Kloud’s expertise will make it even easier for our customers transition their workloads and applications to the cloud. Kloud will enhance Telstra’s consulting-led capabilities by expanding our professional and managed services, complementing recent acquisitions such as NSC, O2 Networks and Bridgepoint.”
Conclusion
While this acquisition appears to be welcomed by Bowers, and no doubt some of its employees will be pleased to join the larger organisation, it will be interesting to see how many employees remain with Telstra in a few years time. Acquiring smaller business and assimilating their employees into the Telstra culture should not prove too difficult but there will be some who will want to remain independent. While Telstra is gaining 80 customers some of whom already use Telstra services indirectly it will be interesting to see how Telstra make use of this acquisition.
