Bulletproof acquires top Kiwi AWS partner

ASX-listed hosting and cloud provider Bulletproof has acquired Amazon Web Services partner Cloud House for up to NZ$4.2 million (approximately $3.8 million).

Cloud House is a New Zealand company with offices in Wellington and Auckland. It provides consulting, billing and managed services for enterprise customers migrating to AWS public cloud.

Bulletproof will pay NZ$1 million upfront with the possibility of earning up to NZ$4.2 million based on performance. The deal is expected to bring in approximately NZ$3.5 million in annualised revenue for Bulletproof.

Bulletproof chief executive Anthony Woodward told CRN the dozen staff will all be brought across, with Cloud House co-founders Scott Judson and Jordan Greig heading up the New Zealand operations.

“We have been working with the outstanding team at Cloud House on a number of partnered opportunities for some time and we have always been impressed with the innovative customer-focused capabilities of the Cloud House team,” said Woodward.

“With great cultural alignment between the organisations already demonstrated, we believe the Cloud House team will feel at home within the wider Bulletproof Group and we’re excited to welcome them aboard.”

The addition of Cloud House's staff also gives Bulletproof a physical presence in New Zealand as well as an expanded customer base.

“We had customers in New Zealand already, but some of them needed that consulting piece,” said Woodward.

“We went through a number of partners and we saw that Cloud House was well regarded by AWS and had some good innovations. We’re now in a position to take this partnership with its managed services capabilities into the New Zealand market.

“The New Zealand public cloud market is untapped but the demand curve is lively around the enterprise customer base but we needed a partner to work with.”

The latest acquisition is the third cloud provider and second AWS partner Bulletproof has bought in the past two years. In September, Bulletproof acquired Infoplex, the private cloud arm of data centre provider Nextgen Group, for $3.5 million. In December 2014, the company acquired Sydney AWS partner Pantha Corp for $3.9 million, which added a professional services arm to previously managed services-dominant Bulletproof.