(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Despite the recession weighing down on just about every industry this year, the IT industry saw a fair share of significant acquisitions made throughout 2009.
Perhaps one of the largest acquisitions of 2009 occurred in April when Oracle Corporation agreed to purchase Sun Microsystems for approximately $7.4 billion. Technology giant IBM was the first company to bid on Sun, which put in a $7 billion offer just a couple weeks prior, only to be rejected by Sun.
The acquisition appears to be a win-win situation for both companies, as it could potentially revive the once prosperous Sun after years of a declining market share since the dot-com bubble burst.
Oracle will benefit from Sun’s Java, which is the language and software platform for the company’s Fusion Middleware, and Solaris software, which is the operating system for Oracle’s largest business, the Oracle database.
In May, application hosting provider HostMySite acquired Louisville, Kentucky-based Web hosting provider Hosting.com. This was the first step in HostMySite’s strategy to become the go-to national provider of managed services, colocation, dedicated servers and virtualized application services.
The addition of Hosting.com’s infrastructure brought to HostMySite an astounding 43,000 square feet across four data centers in the United States. Over the past decade, both companies have expanded rapidly and shared a similar focus on premium-level customer service.
By adding Hosting.com’s services, HostMySite was able to build on its existing service portfolio to provide high-availability and business continuity/disaster recovery solutions for mid-sized enterprise customers.
Later in the year, HostMySite announced that the combined hosting operation would be re-branded under the Hosting.com name.
In August, Web hosting provider Hostopia, the web hosting division of Deluxe Corporation, succesfully acquired the shared Web services customer assets of Aplus.net.
Together with Hostopia’s purchase of search engine marketing firm MerchEngines, which it acquired in early July, the two acquisitions’ combined value was $30 million.
The acquisition resulted in Hostopia adding 80,000 of Aplus.net’s small business subscribers of shared Web hosting, hosted ecommerce stores, managed email services, domain name registration and website management applications to the Deluxe customer base.
Perhaps the most controversial acquisitions this year came from telecommunications provider Zayo Group’s purchase of FiberNet Telecom Group for $86 million in September. The acquisition followed more than a two-month bidding war with rival RCN Corp. Despite receiving a $93.9 million offer from RCN, FiberNet Telecom Group decided to withdraw the higher bid to go with Zayo’s bid.
Some of FiberNet’s investors openly criticized the deal as undervaluing the company. On a more drastic note, one shareholder filed a lawsuit against FiberNet that alleged that the deal was unfair to shareholders and that the company’s board failed to engage in a fair process to assure the highest possible purchase price, that it did not properly value the company and that it failed to disclose material facts involving the proposed deal.
Among the biggest acquisitions of the year, though not of a hosting company, in October, IT research and analyst the 451 Group acquired IT think tank and professional services firm Uptime Institute for an undisclosed amount.
Uptime is best known for developing the Tier Classification System, which is currently the industry standard for comparing the uptime of data centers. The organization’s goals are in keeping with that of the 451 Group’s, which among other things operates Tier1 Research, a firm that analyzes the financial and industry developments that impact the hosting, communications and Internet infrastructure sectors.
At the time of the acquisition, the 451 Group said it will ensure that Uptime Institute Professional Services continues and expand its Tier Program in order to provide greater transparency and education.
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