Gen-i buys cloud infrastructure provider Revera

Gen-i is launching a NZ$96.5 million (A$79.8 million) buyout of cloud infrastructure company Revera, confirming a week of rumours.

The acquisition is intended to improve Gen-i's fortunes in the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) market, which is growing by 25 to 35 percent a year in New Zealand.

The chief executive of Gen-i, Tim Miles, said at a media conference this morning that Revera is a natural fit for his company in New Zealand's fast-growing cloud computing market.

"Revera are experts in the IaaS field and will strengthen Gen-i's data centre offerings" Miles said.

Gen-i intends to build three new data centres nationwide, in Auckland and Wellington with a NZ$10.5 million (A$8.7 million) facility in Christchurch to open in the first half of this year, according to Miles.

Revera was founded in 2002 through a management buyout of Hitachi Data Systems in New Zealand, and has 140 staff. It operates five data centres in the country, and one in Melbourne. The five interconnected NZ data centres form Revera's key offering, the Homeland Network.

In 2011, Revera and Datacom nudged out IBM and Gen-i for a large supply contract to the Inland Revenue Department tax office and was also appointed to the cross-government IaaS vendor panel that year.

Gen-i intends to keep the Revera brand, and the IaaS provider will continue to operate as a standalone business. 

A spokesperson for Gen-i told iTnews there will be no staff cuts as a result of the acquisition.

The company also said it would not exit the Australian market completely to focus solely on New Zealand. Last week CRN reported that Gen-i's IT services divison was being wound down. The company's general manager Paul Donohoe left a message with CRN this week to dispute the story but provided no further details.

Telecom New Zealand, the parent company of Gen-i, said in March this year that 120 out of 180 Aussie employees would lose their jobs at the solutions provider which would also back out of business that does not span both sides of the Tasman.