Telstra to acquire Versent for A$267.5m

Telstra plans to acquire technology consultancy Versent for A$267.5m in a bid to expand its enterprise IT services business and support the digitisation of businesses and Australian industry.

A key Amazon Web Services (AWS) partner in Australia, Versent’s customer base includes over 40% of ASX 100 companies that use its professional and managed services to support their cloud adoption efforts. It also offers the Stax cloud management platform that enterprises can use to design, build and run their own cloud.

David Burns, group executive of Telstra Enterprise, said the acquisition of Versent supports Telstra's growth strategy and commitment to support the digital ambitions of Australia’s biggest industries.

“Since launching our Telstra Purple technology services business four years ago, we’ve seen growing demand for technology solutions – particularly in cyber security and cloud-led transformation – as enterprises, governments and whole industries continue to digitise their operations.

“Through the combination of our global partnerships, breadth of our networks and technology, and strength of our deep-domain experts, we have never been better set up to deliver secure, large-scale transformation through technology,” he said.

Burns expects Versent to bring additional depth to Telstra’s team of experts and help enterprise customers maximise their investment in cloud-led transformations.

“We see strong synergies between Versent and Telstra Purple in our customer base, our strategic partners, our team cultures and the way we tackle customer problems with technology solutions,” Burns said.

“And like Telstra Purple, Versent also has an international presence, particularly in Southeast Asia, which provides significant potential to grow sales of international and Australian digital transformation services.

Versent, currently owned by a mix of its founders, investors and employees, reported A$130m net revenue in financial year 2023, representing a 17% compound annual growth rate between financial years 2020 to 2023.

It has over 500 employees across offices in Australia, Singapore and the US and has delivered more than 1,300 projects, migrated or transformed over 1,000 cloud workloads, and manages more than 350 million secure identities.

Paul Migliorini, CEO of Versent and former ANZ managing director at AWS, said: “Versent was founded on a belief that the way technology services were delivered needed to fundamentally change. One principle has governed all our activity, that success for Versent is solely a function of our customers’ success.

“We’ve used this principle to underpin our focus on investing in engineering depth, craft, innovation and a culture that enables the best engineering talent to thrive. At Versent this mindset is called ‘done done’. We’re pleased to have identified a partner that appreciates and shares our ‘done done’ culture”.

Telstra expects to complete its acquisition of Versent within the next six weeks, subject to various conditions being met, including certain securityholder processes.