A group of investors, which includes a teachers’ pension fund and Canada’s largest communications firms, has closed the acquisition of Q9 Networks, one of the biggest companies providing data center services in Canada.
The investor group consists of Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, BCE (also known as Bell), Providence Equity Partners and Madison Dearborn Partners. Together, they paid C$1.1bn. Bell’s contribution was $1.85m, the communications company said.
The new owners said they would let Toronto-based Q9’s existing management team continue doing what they were doing with the company. Both CEO Osama Arafat and president and COO Paul Sharpe will remain in charge of Q9, which provides hosting, colocation and cloud-based services out of its 12 data centers in British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario.
In a joint statement, the investors said the Q9 team had established a strong leader in the country’s data center market. “We look forward to applying our combined expertise and resources to help Q9 build on its success and grow over the long term,” the statement read.
They also indicated that there were plans to integrate Q9’s cloud offerings with Bell’s network infrastructure – a common goal in telco-colo acquisitions. “The combination of Q9's innovative data center services with Bell's world-leading network and hosting infrastructure offers leading data center and cloud solutions for private and public sector organizations of all sizes in Canada,” the investors said.