Telstra buys Kloud, invests in Instart Logic

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news Telstra has entered an agreement to acquire Kloud, a firm that helps governments and companies seeking to transition their workloads and applications to the cloud. Additionally, the telco indicates it has made a strategic investment in Instart Logic, a provider of next-gen application delivery services.

With employees located across Australia and in Manila in the Philippines, Kloud assists corporate and governmental customers in Australia and Asia adopt and take advantage of cloud technologies.

Michelle Bendschneider, Telstra Executive Director Global Enterprise and Services, said: “We are committed to helping Telstra customers increase agility, lower costs and increase their competitive advantage. Kloud’s expertise can make it even easier for our customers to transition their workloads and applications to the cloud.

The proposed acquisition is aimed to bring further growth and expanded capabilities for Telstra’s Network Applications and Services portfolio, which provides enterprise and business customers with managed network and security services, as well as cloud and communications solutions.

Kloud has brand awareness in the Australian market and has been working in the Asia Pacific region, predominantly in Singapore. The firm has 150 employees across Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Manila with more than 80 customers. The transaction is likely to be completed towards the end of February.

Regarding Telstra’s investment in Instart Logic, Mark Sherman, Managing Director of Telstra Ventures, said his firm was drawn by the opportunity presented by Instart Logic’s application delivery service.

“Given mobility continues to be one of the top trends in the technology space, we are excited to start the year with an investment in Instart Logic. Their end-to-end application delivery platform combines machine learning for performance and security with a [content delivery network] for delivery,” said Sherman.

“Instart logic’s platform uses a machine learning based approach to better predict user behaviour, downloading only the relevant aspects of a webpage and enabling users to view and interact with a page before all elements have finished loading. These techniques are highly beneficial in a mobile first world as they can reduce the download size of a typical application by more than 30%.”

Instart Logic’s application delivery platform also provides multi-layered security capabilities to protect against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) and other cybersecurity attacks.

“We are looking forward to working with Instart Logic to apply their technology in our business. The market that they supply is huge and we are confident in their ability to execute,” said Sherman.

Manav Mital, Chief Executive Officer of California-based Instart Logic, said the company had seen increased sales in 2015.

“We welcome the investment from Telstra, who we believe will be a strong partner as we expand our business outside of the United States. Asia has emerged as a global hub for mobile app businesses and we do see a lot of opportunities for us in the region by leveraging Telstra’s rich experience and footprint in the Asia-Pacific region.”

Image credit: Telstra