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Private Equity Firm Acquires Hosted E-Mail Giant Intermedia
Exchange hoster Intermedia has been acquired by private equity firm Oak Hill Partners for an undisclosed amount.
New York-based Intermedia is a major provider of Exchange hosting services. The company manages 320,000 Exchange seats and has 38,000 customers that are serviced by 6,800 partners. Though Intermedia is a Microsoft partner, its offerings also compete with Microsoft's forthcoming Office 365 product and Business Productivity Online Services (BPOS).
With Intermedia's founder and majority shareholder Michael Choupak stepping aside, former Savvis CEO Phil Koen has been named Intermedia's new chairman and chief executive. Koen is a seasoned CEO, having served as CEO of Savvis from 2006 to 2010, as well as president of Equinix, a provider of datacenters and Internet services.
"As a pioneer and now significant player in cloud-based IT services, Intermedia has tremendous potential for further growth by delivering more cost-effective solutions to companies whose on-premise IT is moving to the cloud," Koen said in a statement. "We intend to build Intermedia into a leading provider of a broad suite of cloud services to SMBs and the channels that serve them, with Microsoft Exchange e-mail as the core service."
Intermedia said it plans to expand its portfolio of cloud-based services via new products and acquisitions. The company has already begun that expansion through the offering of hosted PBX, security, archiving, backup and mobility services.
The company also said it will continue to invest in the 24x7 support and cloud migration services.
About the Author
Jeffrey Schwartz is editor of Redmond magazine and also covers cloud computing for Virtualization Review's Cloud Report. In addition, he writes the Channeling the Cloud column for Redmond Channel Partner. Follow him on Twitter @JeffreySchwartz.