Atea acquires Columbus’ Private Cloud business

– Atea has entered into an agreement to acquire Columbus’ private cloud services business. The agreement will take effect from January 2021 and as part of the acquisition a small number of employees will join Atea.

“The agreement with Columbus has great strategic value for us. In 2020, we have invested heavily in cloud and managed services and have experienced significant growth in the areas included in this agreement with Columbus. It’s a perfect match and we see ourselves as a natural cloud partner for the customers we are now taking over, and we are looking forward to helping them continue their digital journey”, says CEO in Atea, Kathrine Forsberg.

The investment in Columbus’ Private Cloud business is to be seen in the context of Atea’s recent agreement with SKAT as well as a major partnership agreement with Microsoft to bring the Azure platform to far more Danish customers. As part of the latter, several hundred Atea consultants have upgraded their cloud capabilities with the highest certifications, and this all reflects Atea’s significantly increased focus on managed services and the cloud.

Columbus focuses its business

With the sale of the Private Cloud business, Columbus is focusing its Infrastructure Managed Services business on public cloud solutions that target the company’s customers within the key industries; food, retail and production.

”With the sale of our Private Cloud services and customer portfolio to Atea, we can focus our Columbus Care business on public cloud and our large portfolio of Application Management Services while ensuring our Private Cloud customers the best expertise with Atea Cloud”, says Interim CEO & Corporate CFO in Columbus, Hans Henrik Thrane.

The sale of the Private Cloud business is part of Columbus’ Focus23 strategy to simplify the business and focus more on digital advisory and services for larger customers. Today, Columbus provides a wide range of solutions within Infrastructure Managed Services such as private cloud, public cloud and application management under the Columbus Care Services umbrella.