Telstra acquires tech company Kloud for $40M

Telco giant Telstra has acquired Melbourne-based cloud computing service provider Kloud for AU$40 million.

Kloud, an award winning Microsoft partner, assists both corporate and government customers in Australia and across the Asian region, predominantly in Singapore, in adopting to cloud technologies. With 150 employees in offices across Australia and Manila, the company aims to help to define, design, build and deploy cloud solutions to enterprises.

Michelle Bendschneider, Executive Director of Global Enterprise and Services, Telstra said Kloud’s expertise would facilitate the transition of workloads and applications to the cloud by Telstra customers.

“Kloud will enhance Telstra’s consulting-led capabilities by expanding our professional and managed services, complementing recent acquisitions such as NSC, O2 Networks and Bridgepoint,” said Ms Bendschneider in a press release.

According to ZDNet, Telstra has been heavily investing in tech companies for the past two years. In August 2014, the telco had struck a multi-million dollar deal with video-streaming and analytics company Ooyala.

Australia's largest telecom company also made a multi-million dollar investment through Telstra Ventures in Taiwanese company Gorilla Technology Group in early 2015. Telstra has furthermore promised AU $10 million over five years to help in the development of a quantum computer, following a breakthrough in the development of quantum computer chips by a team of scientists at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) under the leadership of Professor Andrew Dzurak.

Telstra expects to close the deal with Kloud by the end of February.