Telephone and Data Systems Announces Acquisition of MSN Communications for $40 Million

Telephone and Data Systems (TDS), a provider of wireless; broadband, TV and voice, and hosted and managed services, recently announced the acquisition of Englewood, Colo. based MSN Communications for $40 million.

Doug Schuck, CEO at MSN Communications, believes that it is the “right time” and the “right company” to join forces with. MSN Communications is a provider of products and services that include engineering, procurement, installation, and management of IT infrastructure hardware solutions from original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

The company has a team of 104 employees and it generated annual revenues of nearly $99 million in 2012.

Through this latest acquisition, TDS expects to enhance its capabilities as IT solutions provider. Moreover, the company is also hoping to strengthen its customer relationships in the portfolio offered via TDS Hosted & Managed Services (TDS HMS).

“Doug Schuck and the employees of MSN Communications have built an IT services powerhouse acting as a trusted advisor to companies throughout the Rocky Mountain Region,” said Phil LaForge, president at TDS HMS.

LaForge said that MSN will add colocation and cloud services to the TDS HMS catalog.

Additionally, TDS HMS has announced its intention to construct a Tier 3 (News - Alert) data center in Douglas County, which is located southeast of the Denver metro area. According to company’s officials, they seek to “break ground” on the facility sometime in the beginning of 2014.

The five phases of the build-out of this project will be spread in an area of up to 100,000 square feet, according to company officials. At the data center, ReliaCloud will be deployed, providing a local cloud solution and colocation services, as well.

ReliaCloud is an enterprise-class IT infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) solution developed for resource intensive applications and databases that requires a secure and compliant operational framework.

According to a recent market report, global data center colocation and managed hosting services market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 16.57 percent over the period 2012-2016.

In order to tap the growing hosted and managed services market and expand TDS HMS position in the market, TDS has made a number of “strategic acquisitions” in the last three years, company officials said. 

Last year in June, the company announced the acquisition of Vital Support Systems for a purchase price of $45 million. It purchased OneNeck IT Services Corporation in June 2011, while TEAM Technologies was acquired by the company in 2010.