Managed hosting firm UKFast has acquired cybersecurity specialist S-IA, as it pushes for more government business.
Claiming the acquisition "adds extraordinary weight to our public sector offering", UKFast CEO Lawrence Jones said the deal took a year to conclude.
S-IA offers private cloud services, and is cleared to hold Impact Level 3, Impact Level 4 and List-X protected data with clients including the Cabinet Office (since 2003) and the Ministry of Defence, according to Jones.
The Cabinet Office changed its security classifications in April 2014 to Official, Secret and Top Secret, but the impact level ratings held by S-IA means it is accredited to store very sensitive data.
Martin Knapp, S-IA's CEO, will head up UKFast's G-Cloud team as UKFast moves into the high-level security services market. The companies closed the deal on Friday, just six months after UKFast's security business, Secarma, bought Pentest in July 2016.
Knapp said in a blog post: "This is a hugely exciting move for all of us at S-IA. There are so many technical synergies between us and UKFast; at the hardware level, the software level and at the service level too. Their technical capabilities and infrastructure are like none I've seen elsewhere. Wholly owned, UK-based data centres are such an important factor for the sector we're dealing with."
Jones said in another blog post: "We're truly proud to make a further move into working with our government, especially with such an extraordinary team.
"S-IA chief executive Martin Knapp and the rest of his team are a fantastic group of people and I am looking forward to Martin settling into his role heading up our G-Cloud team as part of the move."
The sum of the acquisition remains undisclosed.
