Colohouse has had quite the last year. From management changes, to a major acquisition, to nomination for industry recognition, the company is taking all the right steps to stay ahead of customer demands and stay well-positioned for industry changes.
New CEO
At the end of 2022, Colohouse started repositioning the company for growth in the colocation industry by appointing a new CEO, Jeremy Pease. Pease came to Colohouse with over 20 years of experience in data center, cloud, and developing IT infrastructure teams.
Previously the SVP of Managed Services at Databank and COO at Aptum, his industry experience gives him the vision Colohouse was seeking as they embarked on the next stage of their growth.
According to Kevin Reed, Board Member at Colohouse and Principal at Valterra Partners, “Pease’s unique perspective on the market and strong leadership will guide Colohouse through future acquisitions and growth strategies.”
This projection has proved itself out, as additional changes at the management level were made and a significant acquisition completed.
Pease will be speaking on the Hybrid IT & AI trends panel at this year's Data Center Frontier Trends Summit, September 4-6, 2024. The full conference program can be found here.
New Management Team
In April of 2023, ColoHouse promoted Scott Fuhriman to Chief Technology Officer. Fuhriman had joined the team through the previous acquisition of Lume Technologies and brought more than 20 years of leadership in product strategy, technology, and operations.
Driving product and technology strategy, Fuhriman is a major influence as the company transforms itself into a next-generation service provider. Said Pease, “His ability to distill complex technical domains into clear strategies is critical for our continued success.”
Further management changes for Colohouse included adding UK-based Ross Woodham as the company's Chief Legal Officer.
Woodham's expertise in security, compliance, and international business, combined with over a decade of experience in data center and IT infrastructure, are key capabilities as Colohouse looks at global expansion as well as additional merger and acquisition opportunities.
To complete the upgraded senior management team in 2023, Colohouse then added Aaron Pullin as its Chief Financial Officer. He had previously served as CFO of Honest Network where he had a track record of both driving revenue growth and securing funding.
Reaping the Benefits
The changes at the top in 2023 quickly bore fruit for the company, as by the end of the year Colohouse had launched a dedicated server and hosting service by integrating their acquisition of Turnkey Internet as part of the Colohouse primary brand and services portfolio.
This was accomplished by aligning the earlier acquisition with the broader compute, connectivity and cloud strategy that Colohouse had been targeting.
The strategy had a goal of giving customers a single provider who already understood the customer’s goals and ecosystem to provide a range of services to meet the customer demands.
Pease explained the value this way:
“The customer journey and experience is our top priority. Consolidating the brands into Colohouse removes confusion about the breadth of our offerings. Our capability to provide colocation, cloud, and hosting services supports our customers’ growing demand for infrastructure that can be optimized for cost, performance and security. This move also consolidates our internal functions, which will continue to improve the customer experience at all levels.”
Hivelocity Acquisition
Now in 2024 the changes for Colohouse are really ramping up, starting with the company's acquisition of Hivelocity, a leading provider a bare metal hosting services.
Describing the acquisition of Hivelocity as a strategic one, Pease said, “Together, Colohouse and Hivelocity create a unique, next-generation provider that places the customer’s needs and success at the forefront, providing them with the connectivity and computing power required to deploy and manage modern applications and data.”
The key benefits of the acquisition were described as improving the Colohouse infrastructure by adding Hivelocity’s bare metal servers, network automation, and virtual private cloud solutions.
While the company already existed in that space, the additional capacity provided by the acquisition gives customers more robust services and a more flexible path to addressing tasks that require greater computing power and more connectivity options.
The acquisition also provides a significant boost to automation and self-service capabilities across private infrastructures supported by Colohouse. The combined platform enables additional capabilities including developer tools, APIs, and SDN.
VMware CSP Elevation
Concurrent with the acquisition of Hivelocity, Colohouse was named a Premier Tier VMware Cloud Service Provider with the Broadcom Advantage Partner Program in the U.S.
This move represents a significant jump from the previous VMware program, which allows for the company to support the VMware shift towards subscription-based services.
Colohouse CTO Fuhriman said of the advances, “Drawing on our extensive background, we are committed to delivering streamlined and economically viable hosted private cloud solutions that enable a full range of capabilities that businesses require in today’s complex cloud landscape, delivering a viable alternative or complement to public cloud environments.”
Private Cloud
This program change allowed the company to last month launch a next-generation private cloud services platform that leverages the bare metal services brought by Hivelocity and the latest in VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), Cloud Director, and NSX architectures.
The new service will also provide fully integrated backup, restore, and disaster recovery (DR) capabilities and services.
The newly integrated Hivelocity group also announced some leadership changes last month, with Jason Burnett joining as Chief Operating Officer, and Charlie Dankner as Chief Revenue Officer. These hires are part of the efforts to drive Hivelocity's growth and enhance its enterprise-class service offerings.
Industry Recognition
Early in August 2024, Colohouse/Hivelocity was shortlisted for TMT M&A Digital Infrastructure Mid-Market Deal of the Year.
The TMT M&A Awards are organized by TMT Finance, a company that is focused on delivering actionable intelligence to businesses involved in mergers and acquisitions. The awards recognize excellence in mergers and acquisitions within the Technology, Media, and Telecom sectors.
According to the announcement, the key issues that put Colohouse/Hivelocity in consideration for this award were:
- Integration of top-tier talent dedicated to customer success.
- Enhanced automation and self-service capabilities across private infrastructure.
- Expanded geographic footprint with multiple domestic and international locations.
- Development of a new private cloud offering, launched in Q3 of 2024.
The award winner will be announced on September 26 at an event dinner as part of the 2024 TMT M&A Forum USA.
