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Global private equity firm I Squared Capital has acquired Singapore-based specialists InfoFabrica and Cloud Kinetics, combining expertise to create a Managed Services Provider (MSP) serving the Southeast Asian and Indian markets.
The multi-million dollar transaction, delivered through the ISQ Global Infrastructure Fund II, aims to capitalize on increased customer demand for cloud migration and managed services across the region, supported by hyperscaler capabilities in Amazon Web Services (AWS ), Microsoft and Google Cloud.
Asia Channel may reveal that the investments will also be part of a new Asian digital infrastructure platform, designed to enable I Squared Capital’s digital infrastructure companies to deliver “end-to-end cloud-based solutions.” Specifically, the platform will host a growing group of more than 300 professionals with extensive experience and certifications in cloud infrastructure, data and analytics, application modernization and cloud management.
The platform is co-founded by Haji Munshi, who will lead the combined business as Group CEO of InfoFabrica and Cloud Kinetics, and will join the new company after executive roles at Google Cloud, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Cisco and Dell Technologies. This is in addition to the support of Tameem Ebrahim, former founding partner of Quvat Capital and former investment banker for Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank in Southeast Asia.
“The future of data and computing will be driven by corporate adoption of hybrid cloud solutions through an orchestrated combination of on-premises infrastructure, co-location and cloud services,” said Gautam Bhandari, managing partner at I Squared Capital. “Delivering an efficient and seamless migration to the hybrid cloud alleviates a critical bottleneck to cloud adoption, especially in the Asia Pacific region.
“The combination of InfoFabrica and Cloud Kinetics will result in a powerful provider of cloud migration solutions for our customers. With these acquisitions, our global investments and commitments to the digital infrastructure sector exceed $ 2.6 billion and continue to grow. “
Founded in 2013, InfoFabrica recently unveiled plans to prioritize enhancing managed services capabilities amid the development of single intellectual property (IP) to accelerate cloud migration in Southeast Asia.
Under the leadership of Wen Chi Li as founder and director, the company is focused on guiding clients through hybrid cloud projects through consulting and managed services.
With clients spanning ASEAN and Asia Pacific, the supplier has established offices in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand, along with the Philippines, Vietnam, and Cambodia. From a vendor perspective, InfoFabrica aligns with AWS, Google Cloud, and VMware, as well as Microsoft, IBM, Nutanix, and Equinix, among others.
“We are excited to partner with I Squared Capital, their expertise and breadth in Asia, coupled with existing large-scale investments in telecommunications and data centers, will certainly accelerate us and bring us closer to our vision of being the best cloud migration. and MSP in the region ”, added Abu Bakar Mohd Nor, president of InfoFabrica.
“The complementary capabilities of InfoFabrica and Cloud Kinetics are key and part of our strategy to be an end-to-end cloud specialist and also simplify our customers’ cloud migration journey.”
Meanwhile, Cloud Kinetics, founded by Karthik S. as CTO in 2012, has operations in Singapore, Thailand, India, and the US, and operates as a certified cloud partner of Microsoft Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud.
“The debate on the need for the cloud has ended after the Covid-19 pandemic experience,” Munshi said. “Whether businesses are developing and testing their new applications, expanding their e-commerce offerings online, or running their core business workloads, this is only possible thanks to the stable and scalable solutions that the public cloud offers.
“The demand for technical capacity to migrate to the cloud has far exceeded the supply in Asia Pacific thus far and the combined company will be the market leader in cloud migration services.”
Based in Miami, Florida, I Squared Capital goes to market as an independent global infrastructure investment manager focusing on energy, utilities, telecommunications and transportation in North America, Europe and select high-growth economies – the firm has offices in Miami, New York, Houston, London, New Delhi, Hong Kong and Singapore.
The mega-merger comes as cloud services appear poised to remain “resilient” across Southeast Asia for the remainder of 2020, providing “strong growth” opportunities as both customers and partners reposition themselves to grow.
That’s based on IDC’s findings, and investment in infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is expected to increase by 26% over the next six months, driven by increased demand for collaboration and business continuity technologies. During the same period in ASEAN, platform-as-a-service (PaaS) deployments are expected to increase by 38.5 percent, along with a projected growth of 22.8 percent within the software-as-a-service (SaaS) space. .
“It is clear that organizations have benefited from cloud technology during this crisis,” observed Duncan Tan, senior manager for Malaysia research at IDC. “As overall ICT spending is declining, we expect more organizations to shift budgets toward cloud-based technologies and applications in the near future.”
In assessing the regional market, Tan indicated a “strong sentiment” toward increased investments in cloud services over the short to medium term, resulting in growth potential for forward-thinking partners.
“As ASEAN organizations look to recover from the pandemic, there are changes that many companies are looking to adapt to move forward,” Tan explained. “Remote work and distributed workforce will be prominent due to the prolonged effect of the pandemic as well. as organizations building business continuity and resilience in cloud technologies. “
In response, Tan said such a shift in market dynamics “sets precedence” for the sustained growth of cloud services in ASEAN in 2020.
“The cloud alleviated problems for many organizations during the lockdown where IT had to struggle in a short period of time to support remote work by providing the necessary scalability and elasticity,” he added. “This included ensuring that applications and data were accessible remotely and that the proper tools for communications, including video conferencing, operated in a secure environment.”
As ASEAN countries emerge from respective “lockdown” periods, Tan said organizations are also “rethinking” cloud strategies from a medium to long-term perspective, as well as focusing on how budgets will be allocated. of you.
“The acceleration around the adoption of digital transformation initiatives in the region is expected to be strongly driven by the cloud; Automation, business resilience, continuity, communication and collaboration tools, as well as data analytics, will see an upward trend as businesses will have to respond more quickly in the future, ”Tan said.
Tags MicrosoftIBMAmazon Web ServicesGoogle CloudInfoFabricaCloudCloud KineticsI Squared Capital
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