Cloud play a plus in Primus buy

Data centres and fibre connectivity boost M2 plans.

Primus chief executive Tom Mazerski has revealed plans to unveil cloud services, including software and infrastructure offerings, on the back of its sale this week to M2.

The Australian arm of the US telco was sold to the reseller for $192.4 million yesterday, after a six-month attempt to offload its non-US business.

The acquisition gives M2 a retail market of 165,000 customers and significant corporate clout for the first time, along with 500 Australian staff.

It also gives M2 three data centres with 2508 square metres of technical floor space with room for expansion to 4573 square metres.

Although the company has primarily used the facilities for hosted and managed services, Mazerski told iTnews this week that the company was "very close" to launching infrastructure- and software-as-a-service offerings under the Primuscloud.com.au brand name.

"It's just another puzzle piece [for M2]," he said.

Before the acquisition, M2 was looking to build out its own cloud service capability for sale to small and medium businesses through its Commander brand.

Primus gives M2 that capability, backed up by a million-dollar investment in capital city fibre connections and a corporate sales base.

"We're already there, we're already doing that," Mazerski said.

"There's a lot of players building data centres all around Australia by themselves; that's not what we do. We have a complementary offering so any customers we sell data to, or need that service, we're already there to provide it."

He said the business was "very profitable" to the company, which had $280 million revenues in the 2011 calendar year.

Though the company already sits on the Federal Government's data centre facilities panel, Mazerski said Primus' US ownership - and PTGi's history of a bankruptcy - had hampered sales of some services to large companies and particularly government agencies.

As part of the acquisition, Mazerski will leave the parallel role of global chief marketing officer he filled at Primus' owner, PTGi to head up M2's newly carved consumer and corporate businesses.