Iver buys City Network: wants to build local clouds for global clients

Backed by the owner, venture capital firm EQT, the operating company Iver has grown strongly through acquisitions in recent years. Today it was time again, when they bought Karlskrona-based City Network, which has invested heavily in the provision of open standards-based Swedish cloud services. And that is exactly what attracts Iver, creating a new European cloud alternative for Swedish and international operations that have operations both locally and globally.

– You have to have ambition. We want to do something that is a Swedish alternative for the European market, where we are really involved in driving digitization, says Ivers CEO Carl-Magnus Månsson of the acquisition.

While the deal may have come as a surprise to many, it was hardly a surprise to Iver’s management. Rather, the deal has been in the works for a while.

– It’s exciting how the world works. We had a dialogue with this band for a relatively long period, then a little before the summer, says Carl-Magnus Månsson and points out that it was a lot about following City Network and seeing how it should fit in with Iver.

I saw an opportunity

– We looked at how they go to market and we saw that we have an opportunity, especially when it comes to dealing with clients who have more demands for transparency.

It’s not just about the question of where customers should store their data, a question that has become increasingly relevant over the summer. Iver already works as a partner with the big cloud giants AWS, Microsoft and Google. And now you have another alternative to clouds.

– This is a solution in that market segment. City Network is built from the ground up to manage the European legal space. We found a way to work together and our customers living in a hybrid world will appreciate this opportunity, says the CEO of Iver.

Has the Schrems II ruling expedited the deal?

– It was pure coincidence. We had started the dialogue even before the verdict and everyone agreed on how it would turn out. It only confirmed that there is a need for an alternative with European innovative power based on open standards. We want to be one of those driving that work.

Do you see yourself now as a competitor to AWS and Microsoft?

– We will not be competitors for them. We will continue to provide their services. This is another platform, based on a different standard.

I don’t want to reveal the price

He does not want to comment on any price. According to Dagens Industri, this is approximately SEK 300 million. Carl-Magnus Månsson chooses to comment, or not comment, on that figure with his standard response from when the parties agreed not to disclose any prices.

– We had to pay exactly what it’s worth. Again. Otherwise, there will normally be no deal.

If, for example, Visolit, or any of its other competitors, wants to offer City Network as an alternative. Can they come crawling to you then?

– We are open to other channels to market this service. Only you can handle it. City Network typically works with clients who have an advanced technology department.

Carl-Magnus Månsson says that after the acquisition, Iver has approximately 1,300 employees. They are distributed in 25 offices in Sweden and Norway. City Network is based in Karlskrona, and the plan is that City Network will continue to be its own brand and business area within Iver, under the leadership of the company’s CEO, Johan Christenson. The company’s services include the Compliant Cloud IT infrastructure service and the City Cloud public cloud service.

Iver’s round of acquisitions has meant substantial growth in the number of data centers. We don’t get an exact figure for how many people are left today, but Carl-Magnus Månsson says there is an ongoing effort to keep the number low so there aren’t too many, but at the same time you don’t want too centralized. rather model.

– We aim to go down a bit there, and little by little we have been consolidating.

Which ones have you removed?

– We have consolidated some smaller ones that came with the acquisitions. But we also need a structure where we have a distributed offer because we want to adapt it to customers who want it nearby.

Today’s large facilities are located in Alingsås, Stockholm, Landskrona, Bergen and Oslo.

And now you get even more. One of the things that unites the two companies is that both Iver and City Network work with clients that have the Nordic region as a starting point, but are also present in several other markets. It is precisely around the combination of local and global presence that the joint offer will be built, where both have a presence in Europe, North America and Asia.

City Network founder and CEO, Johan Christenson, hopes to continue work with the company’s cloud services under the Ivers banner.

– The discussion about how to be able to combine digital innovation and at the same time comply with regulatory requirements is a topic on the table of all large companies at the moment. The same is the case for top management in the EU, where Commission President Ursula von der Leyen recently pointed out the importance of creating a European cloud standard to address digital transformation. Until today, the market has been dominated by a few companies, but now we are increasing competition. We combine digital innovation, regulatory compliance and global delivery and thus become the European cloud alternative, he says.

Read also: Iver expands global operating agreement

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