7th February 2017
Dow Schofield Watts Transaction Services advised hosting provider UKFast on its acquisition of cloud and cyber security services provider Secure Information Assurance (S-IA).
Lancashire-based S-IA works with many government organisations and has long-standing agreements with the Cabinet Office and Ministry of Defence.
The deal gives UKFast access to IL3 and IL4/Official-Sensitive accreditations as well as the UK’s highest security rated hosting, known as List-X.
Lawrence Jones, CEO of UKFast, comments: “Acquiring S-IA is a strategic move, not only because of its high-profile government clients, but also because of its security product set. They are already delivering accredited services from List-X facilities to a number of clients.
“It’s a business that’s very much on the rise and the deal was an extremely competitive process, but the S-IA management team sees the clear advantage of partnering with UKFast, seeing the instant scalability of our eCloud platform as the perfect offering for the government.”
S-IA chief executive Martin Knapp is set to head up Jones’ G-Cloud team as part of the move, targeting a share of the £1.69bn currently spent through the government procurement framework.
UKFast co-founder and commercial director Gail Jones and director of mergers and acquisitions Catherine Houghton oversaw the deal.
Dow Schofield Watts Transaction Services carried out financial due diligence for UKFast, with the team led by Nicola Merritt.