SingleHop, a Chicago-based cloud-infrastructure startup, announced Tuesday the acquisition of Server Intellect, a Florida-based company that specializes in Windows cloud-hosting solutions.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. But SingleHop CEO Zak Boca said the acquisition lets his company offer services on both the VMware and the Microsoft Hyper-V platforms, which he said together account for more than 80 percent of the market. SingleHop had offered services only on the VMware platform.
“To say we’re doubling down (on the private cloud space) would be an understatement,” Boca said.
Private cloud services allow companies to operate and store data in the cloud — accessible servers on the Internet — but within their own corporate firewalls. SingleHop offers a package of managed private cloud services that Boca said targets mid-sized businesses, those large enough to need cloud solutions but not large enough to want to build and maintain their own systems.
Boca said the move acknowledges the growing importance of Microsoft-based Hyper-V, which he said covers 30 percent of the market compared with VMware’s 50 percent market share.
“Server Intellect brings an incredible amount of expertise in a wide range of Microsoft-based hosting technologies,” he said, adding that the company “was the obvious choice for expanding SingleHop’s private cloud platform into the Windows ecosystem.”
SingleHop was founded in 2006 but has seen significant recent growth, raising more than $40 million in seed capital since 2012, including a $27.5 million investment from Boston-based Battery Ventures in 2012 and $14.8 million from Silicon Valley Bank in 2014, Boca said.
The company recently opened a $30 million data center in Franklin Park.
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