I note with interest that hosting company Intermedia has been bought by Oak Hill Capital.
Intermedia was predominantly a US based company offering a range of services in The Cloud to SMB companies such as hosted Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint, Blackberry and more. Recently, Intermedia had launched a 'European wide' white label offering out of its European office in London.
It's an interesting play as Intermedia is looking to offer its services via resellers which it hopes will give it access to the thousands of companies in the SMB sector in the UK and mainland Europe. I use Fasthosts which is now German owned and its centre is in Gloucester. It isn't the cheapest of services for Exchange hosting but I have found it ultra-reliable and very convenient as a nomadic user, offering me full Exchange and ActivSync capabilities no matter where I log in from. I definitely see this as a way to go for small businesses in the future.
As the impetus of The Cloud develops, distributors are going to have to make their move into this market or potentially yield the opportunity to companies like Fasthosts and Intermedia to service resellers.
Maybe that's what Oak Hill are banking on. At some point the big guns like Tech Data and Ingram Micro will have to make their move. Intermedia provides a tempting short cut into the market if the price is right.
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