Evolve IP, Equinix Buy Channel-Partner Businesses

**Editor’s Note: Please click here for a recap of the biggest channel-impacting mergers in Q4 2014.**

The growing trend of service providers buying up channel-partner companies continues.

Cloud-services provider Evolve IP has acquired Webcore Technologies, an Austin, Texas-based MSP.

Webcore provides on-site and remote IT support to enterprise and midsize businesses – particularly useful to customers who want to migrate to the cloud but don’t have the internal virtualization capabilities needed to do so. Webcore also offers cloud products such as virtual data centers, security and disaster recovery, all services that Evolve IP says complement its own offerings.

“Our market research showed that managed services are an excellent channel for gaining new cloud services accounts,” said Thomas Gravina, chairman and CEO of Evolve IP. “With the acquisition of Webcore Technologies, we are in front of the needs of the market and have an even greater opportunity to help customers take advantage of our unified cloud platform.”

Evolve IP already supports 75,000 users on its virtual private cloud, a number the company expects will increase thanks to its purchase of Webcore. Evolve IP’s channel program invites VARs, systems integrators and independent software vendors to sell its IP phone systems, virtual servers and desktops, hosted contact centers, security, unified communications services and more.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Wayne, Pennsylvania-based Evolve IP last year secured more than $42 million from lender CapitalSource, with some of those dollars earmarked for M&A.

Evolve IP landed on the Inc. 5000 list last year as America’s fastest growing, privately held cloud-services company.

Meantime, Equinix, the data-center services provider, has inked a deal to buy Nimbo, an AWS and Microsoft Azure-certified partner. The purchase price wasn’t revealed.

Nimbo’s main focus is helping enterprises develop and implement hybrid clouds. Equinix wanted Nimbo for its professional-services capabilities that support WAN optimization, data-center migrations and hybrid-cloud services.

“Over the last five years, Nimbo has built a team of certified cloud consultants with expertise in multiple cloud platforms that enable our customers to think big,” said John Shaw, Nimbo’s CEO and co-founder. “During this time we have assessed and migrated hundreds of workloads to the cloud. We are looking forward to working with Equinix to accelerate hybrid-cloud adoption through a world-class cloud professional services organization.”

Equinix expanded its reach often in 2014, partnering with both XO Communications and Level 3 in deals that make its Cloud Exchange services available to more businesses. The company’s collection of telecom-agent, VAR, MSP and systems-integrator partners sell public, private and hybrid clouds. Equinix runs more than 100 data centers around the world.

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