Key Information Systems Buys Cloud And Co-Location Biz
August 26, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan
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Long-time IBM i platform reseller and system integrator Key Information Systems is going into the data center co-location, connectivity, and cloud computing businesses after acquiring ISWest, a data center operator located in its neck of Southern California. Key Info did not disclose the financial details of the acquisition, but Leif Morin, the company’s president, tells The Four Hundred that the opportunity to acquire the assets of ISWest and take on its team of data center operations experts was too good to pass up. Key has 55 employees and generates around $55 million per year from its reseller and consulting businesses, while ISWest has about 15 employees and generates around $15 million. “This is definitely a major transaction for our company,” says Morin, “but strategically it is the correct play for us.” This week, Key Info employees relocated their offices from Woodland Hills to Agoura Hills, where ISWest operates two data centers and also has lots of office space that it built out for its own future expansion. As it turns out, many Key Info execs live closer to Agoura Hills than Woodland Hills, too, so anything to cut down on the commute is a serious bennie. ISWest was founded in 1996 and grew very fast during the 2000s. The company offers co-location of servers in private cabinets (ranging from 1U to 8U in a shared cabinet, a 20U half-private cabinet, or a 40U fully private cabinet), as well as larger 8×12 private cages that you can roll your own racks into. The company also sells virtual server capacity on x86 iron on a monthly utility model, what most people these days call cloud. The company also has connectivity that can be geared down as low as 1Mb/sec and as high as 10Gb/sec coming into those server racks. The facilities are 100 yards away from a 66,000-volt power substation and have a half-megawatt diesel generator backing them up with a 24-hour fuel supply. “We will continue to invest in our reseller business, and it is certainly our plan to grow the core business areas that ISWest focused on,” says Morin. “We also have a strategic plan to add IBM i to our cloud.” That is good news for the IBM i community. The more cloudy options, the better. RELATED STORIES Key to Resell UNIT4 CODA Financials Key Announces GA of Smart i Appliance for BI IBM Gives Its Seal of Approval to Key Information Systems’ Innovation Center Key to Sell Q4biz Business Intelligence Software
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