AWS partner Bulletproof buys private cloud firm for $3.5m

ASX-listed hosting provider Bulletproof has acquired managed private cloud services firm Infoplex for $3.5 million.

Based in Melbourne, Infoplex was the private cloud arm of data centre provider Nextgen Group, with customers such as Bluescope Steel, Crownbet and Movember. Infoplex will continue offering services out of Nextgen-owned Metronode data centres in Sydney and Melbourne.

The acquisition is expected to generate an additional $2 million in earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation. Infoplex currently has an annual revenue of $6 million and EBITDA of $1.4 million.

Bulletproof chief executive Anthony Woodward told CRN that Infoplex will bring 12 employees, with Infoplex general manager Aakash Gandhi heading up the new private cloud team.

“We have private cloud offerings, but we’ve traditionally focused on our digital and web applications,” said Woodward.

“What we’re seeing with applications, specifically enterprise applications, is that customers would rather go to private cloud for a variety of reasons like security.

“We’re seeing more demand for private cloud, and this acquisition helps form our hybrid cloud picture. Moving to a mixture and being able to offer it as a seamless managed service has been a big differentiator for us.”

He added that Bulletproof will gain additional customers “somewhere in the low tens”, mostly enterprise, government and financial services organisations.

Nextgen Group chief executive David Yuile said: “We made the decision to sell Infoplex because our strategic focus is to grow our Network business and further expand our data centres.

“Nextgen Group is already playing a critical role in helping customers to transition to cloud with our Metronode data centres and high-capacity network and this is another step in our business focus.”

The acquisition comes nine months after Bulletproof acquired agile and DevOps cloud specialist Pantha Corp for $3.9 million.