Yesterday we saw another side of the telecommunications world take a step into the cloud. An association of 32 independent, regional telcos has acquired the cloud service provider Codero.
The consortium, currently called BLM Acquisition Corp, is buying out Catalyst Investors, which had been Codero’s backer for 9 years or so. BLM will be putting in the capital necessary to expand Codero’s private and hybrid cloud business, bringing to the table the access networks and customer bases of its member owners.
The idea of smaller, regional providers working together to develop a common asset like this isn’t new, of course. In fact, that’s how many of the members of Indatel were created. The new thing here is the fact that it’s for a cloud services operator, but it does make a lot of sense.
Each of the telcos knows it needs access to this sort of infrastructure going forward, but would have trouble scaling it on its own. By banding together to buy and operate a common cloud business, they hope to keep control over the technology their business will evolve to depend on rather than outsource it completely.
But the question not answered by the press release or any of the articles dutifully created in the media is who the 32 telcos making up this consortium actually are. BLM Acquisition’s founding shareholders are Leo Staurulakis and Manny Starulakis of the telecom consultants John Staurulakis, Inc (JSI), and Bill King of JSI Capital Advisors LLC, which appears to be its investment arm.
The telco members themselves are still behind that curtain though, for now, although we do know the geographical distribution. In a blog post on its site, Codero posted this graphic (left), showing the BLM member PoP locations in grey. They are distributed around the country, but with particular emphasis on the northern Great Plains and the Carolinas.
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Categories: Cloud Computing · Mergers and Acquisitions
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Based on the concentration of access points in the Carolinas, BLM may include Spirit Communications or at least the telcos which own Spirit. Earlier this year, Spirit purchased SCANA Communications.