iomart is buying IT consultancy SystemsUp for an estimate £12.5m

UK cloud service provider iomart announced it has entered into a deal to acquire IT consultancy SystemsUp, which specialises in designing and delivering cloud solutions, for up to £12.5m.

The deal will see iomart pay £9m in an initial cash consideration for the London-based consultancy with a contingent consideration of up to £3.5m depending on performance.

iomart said the move would broaden its cloud computing expertise. SystemsUp designs and delivers solutions made to run on Google, AWS and Microsoft public clouds among other platforms, and specialises in the public sector cloud strategies.

“The market for cloud computing is becoming incredibly complex and the demand for public cloud services is increasing at pace,” said Angus MacSween, chief executive of iomart. “With the acquisition of SystemsUp, iomart has broadened its ability to engage at a strategic level and act as a trusted advisor on cloud strategy to organisations wanting to create the right blend of cloud services, both public and private, to fit their requirements.”

While iomart offers its own cloud services the company seems to recognise the need to build up skills in a range of other platforms; the company said SystemsUp will remain an “impartial, agnostic, expert consultancy.”

Peter Burgess, managing director of SystemsUp said: “We have already built up a significant reputation and expertise in helping organisations use public cloud to drive down IT costs and improve efficiency. As part of iomart we can leverage their award winning managed services offerings to deepen and widen our toolset to deliver a broader set of cloud services, alongside continuing to deliver the strategic advice and deployment of complex large public and private sector cloud projects.”

The move comes six months after iomart’s last acquisition, when the company announced it had bought ServerSpace, a rival cloud service provider, for £4.25m.