Just as this MSP Today reporter was wrapping up a story about an IT services company in the Channel Islands acquiring a data center outfit, there came word of a U.S.-based data center company, InfoRelay, forming a deep partnership with IT solutions outfit American Technology Services, Inc. (ATS).
This combo of IT services and data facilities is increasingly common because it just makes sense – it creates more comprehensive, integrated solutions.
In the case of InfoRelay, it can now edge into the IT services games leveraging its infrastructure, including its recently announced Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) “which it plans to pair with ATS managed hosting services to provide clients with a complete IT solution for needs such as cloud migration and management, enterprise email and application support, website design and development with expertise in .Net-based CMS platforms and more,” said InfoRelay.
The company sports 15 data center locations spread across the United States from which it provides bandwidth services, cloud hosting and colocation.
ATS, now nearly 20 years old, is an established partner for the 18-year-old InfoRelay to be sure. And its Fairfax, Va., headquarters are right in the heart of the U.S. federal market. Despite this, the service provider focuses largely on financial institutions, not-for-profits and associations, as well as the more obvious government contractor market.
Its main areas of business are managed hosting, end-use and network support, and Web development and design.
ATS sees the partnership as boosting the heights its cloud services can reach.
“InfoRelay and ATS bring the right mix of Cloud and software expertise, including systems management and end-user support. ATS has been growing rapidly in integrated cloud services, and InfoRelay is a catalyst for that growth. With InfoRelay’s expertise, ATS can streamline client’s IT integration and improve their operational practices,” said ATS VP Alex Koludrovic.
InfoRelay, meanwhile, expects to have a broader reach, said Josh Abraham, Technical Director at InfoRelay. “With InfoRelay’s experience in data center engineering and ATS’s knowledge of cloud software implementation, clients in mid-market industries can jumpstart their move toward virtualization by utilizing InfoRelay and ATS’ new collaborative offerings”
Moving with the Times
This reporter started covering computers in 1984, a decade before AST launched. 1994 was early for the Internet, and back then AST was “building websites to run on Mosaic. JavaScript did not exist. A 56Kbps line was the most common fixed rate bandwidth available,” AST said.
Internet time sure did move fast, though, and “in 1996, we added managed hosting and Web design and development as formal business units to our service offerings. Along with our network services and IT strategy support, these service groups allowed us to offer our clients comprehensive IT support, tailored to client needs,” the company remembered.
ATS knows what it’s like to partner, and to acquire. One such deal had ATS buying the infrastructure services and network support business from Confluence Corp. This had Confluence refocusing on its Saleforce.com and IT consulting business, while ATS added infrastructure muscle, more weight to its private cloud, and help for its help desk business.
“The acquisition is an easy transfer of clients between the two firms. We see immediately accretive financial results for our business, and we think the breadth and depth of our managed services and cloud capabilities will be of great interest to Confluence’s client base,” said ATS president Jeff Chandler at the time of the acquisition.
ATS president Jeff Chandler
InfoRelay Races to Expand
InfoRelay recently boosted its infrastructure by building its second New York Data center, which is in Lower Manhattan.
“Demand for data center real estate driven by the insurance, financial and web hosting sectors has contributed to our latest facility opening,” said InfoRelay Marketing Coordinator Jonathan Maxim at the time of the data center announcement. “A number of InfoRelay clients sought out data centers with higher availability that still offered competitive pricing. We worked with them to remove any bottlenecks in their expansion efforts.”
Edited by
Alisen Downey
