ThinkGrid, one of the world's first cloud platform vendors for the channel has been acquired by Colt Technology Services, the information delivery platform for European business. ThinkGrid enables channel partners to become successful cloud providers in their own right by offering them a comprehensive portfolio of cloud-based services with a turn-key management platform and the commercial and technical training required to grow their cloud business. The acquisition brings added resources and increased cross-selling opportunities for ThinkGrid's 300 resellers approximately worldwide.

ThinkGrid's success has been in building innovative cloud solutions that allow partners and customers the flexibility to design, build and launch business services that solve specific problems. ThinkGrid's flagship product, the Hosted Virtual Desktop (DaaS), a fully isolated virtual machine, is the most advanced and secure solution on the market. It allows users to install any application, fully customize their experience, offering the tightest integration of existing cloud and on-premise computing. Complementing the Hosted Virtual Desktop solution is the HVDI Management suite, an innovative tool that enables IT administrators or Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to take control of important management tasks in the cloud for their Hosted Virtual Desktop infrastructure. ThinkGrid also offer through their platform, Virtual Servers (IaaS), Unified Communications, Backup and Storage from the cloud.

Currently ThinkGrid is present in 3 tier SSAE6 Certified regional US datacentres; allowing partners to quickly and securely deploy services locally to their customers and know where their data is at all times. The acquisition will aid ThinkGrid in providing more local support to its channel through a comprehensive commercial and technical training programme; better market development funding through extensive business consulting and opportunity support; and also new innovations to the platform with increased software development resources, allowing channel partners to quickly provision and deploy custom public and private solutions to the SME market.

Rob Lovell, CEO of ThinkGrid comments; "Becoming part of Colt Technology Services supports ThinkGrid's vision to become the world's leading cloud services enablement platform for the channel, offering great product and market development opportunities. ThinkGrid will gain access to extended research and development and support resources that will further strengthen the innovation ThinkGrid has brought to the market in terms of both services and service delivery options. We will further build on our three-fold proposition: Services, Platform and Enablement, in an effort to ensure our channel partners can take on the market opportunity that both public and private cloud solutions have to offer."

François Eloy, Executive Vice President at Colt, explains the value ThinkGrid brings to Colt's business; "The SME market for managed services is set to grow at 15% annually during the coming years. Colt is well positioned to penetrate this market through our indirect channels. The acquisition of ThinkGrid further strengthens our position with the addition of a complementary range of cloud-based services. We also gain a reseller-oriented management platform and portal which will reduce our time to market".