Aurora Networks brings new capabilities in the strategically important areas of IP telephony and video conferencing along with a complementary portfolio of data networking and fixed-line services. The company has been growing organically at over 20 per cent year on year. The acquisition will provide incremental revenue opportunities for the Six Degrees Group in emerging market sectors such as hosting of communications servers along with mainstream IT applications and in managed video services. This will also allow Six Degrees Group to leverage a £2 million investment in core network upgrades, including SIP trunking, through the provision of converged voice and video over IP solutions.
Aurora, based in the City of London, was founded nine years ago by its two directors, Mark Tyers and Dan Cholerton. They will be joining the Six Degrees Group team along with 20 employees. Aurora is accredited with Avaya, Polycom and Radvision. Three-quarters of their revenues are for contracted services. The transaction takes Six Degrees Group’s run-rate position to £54 million revenue and £13 million EBITDA.
Commenting on the acquisition, Alastair Mills, CEO of Six Degrees Group, stated “I am delighted to welcome Aurora Networks to Six Degrees Group. This acquisition plugs a gap in our portfolio and allows us to offer new converged services and to add IP telephony to our colocation and cloud hosting offerings. It also enables us to offer video as part of our managed data services suite. Mark and Dan have established a company delivering impressive organic growth with excellent operational and technical capabilities. I have been following their progress for several years and I am delighted that they are joining the Six Degrees Group team.”
In response, Mark Tyers, managing director of Aurora Networks, stated “On behalf of Dan and the rest of the team, I’d like to convey our excitement at this announcement. We’re joining one of the most ambitious companies in the mid-market, an area which has always been our focus, and we’ll be adding new products to an already strong Group. The potential for us to cross-sell telephony, LAN and video offerings into their existing customers, as well us for us to provide managed data and hosting services to our own, is tremendously appealing to us. Six Degrees Group is a perfect fit for our team and our customers and we look forwarding to contributing to the Group’s continued success.”