Aptum Technologies this week announced the completion of a transaction with Beanfield Metroconnect for Aptum’s WAN business, capping off a very active couple of months for the global hybrid cloud and managed services provider.
Beanfield Metroconnect signed a recapitalization deal with Colony Capital’s Digital Colony worth CAD $255 million, and according to the telecom infrastructure provider, the money is being used to support growth and increase scale, and to buy the metro network of Aptum. Beanfield approached Aptum late last year, according to Susan Bowen, chief executive officer at Aptum, and the deal allows Aptum to focus on its strengths.
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“We’re really focused on transforming Aptum so it can focus more on the managed infrastructure services market,” Bowen told the publication. “Beanfield will be a primary channel partner for us. We will manage everything above the fibre layer. We still own our own MPLS product, and we will remain vendor-neutral. I think with the WAN network we sold Beanfield, it’s going to help them be even more competitive in the marketplace against some of the big telcos. And that’s great for the market, good for customers, and great for suppliers like us.”
The Boca Raton, Fla.-based Digital Colony struck a deal with Cogeco Communications last year to acquire the managed services and colocation provider for $720 million. Months later in August, Digital Colony renamed Cogeco Peer 1 to Aptum, officially signalling a massive change in how the company was planning to operate moving forward. This also led to a restructuring of Aptum’s partner program to focus more on the data centre business and make it easier for other businesses to work with them, Bowen explained.
“We’ve always had a wholesale relationship with the vendors in the fibre business, but we really haven’t unlocked the channel strategy potential in the data centre space,” she said.
Earlier this year, the company launched Hybrid Cloud Manager, powered by HyperGrid, a management platform that enables customers to monitor private and hyperscale public cloud environments through a single interface. It was also around the same time managed detection and response (MDR) provider Alert Logic announced Aptum became its first partner to offer its MDR solution in Canada.
There’s been a lot of change within the business, Bowen said, and reversing the declining revenue trend from previous years is hard work that will be accomplished on the back of a broad portfolio of assets that’s still humming even after the latest deal with Beanfield.
“We’re very much focused on enabling multi-hybrid cloud solutions and growing the company,” she said, hinting at more m&a activity in the future.
